How JAF became Locodium

Before our first development framework existed, JFDI was building complex, long-lived business systems. Solutions for clients who needed more than quick wins or throwaway applications. Over time, we observed more and more patterns. Not theoretical, but practical ones shaped by maintenance, change, scale, and the benefit of getting early decisions correct.

We responded to these observed patterns and created the JFDI Application Framework (JAF).

JAF was never intended to be a product. It was our way of working. A structured approach to building applications that balanced speed with discipline, and flexibility with long-term stability. It helped teams move faster without accumulating the kind of hidden complexity that introduces system fragility a year or two later. Components become more reusable with clearer software engineering conventions.

As our development projects grew larger, the framework matured. Over time, it became obvious that JAF was no longer just a framework. It was the foundation of something broader.

The road from JAF to Locodium

The transition from JAF to Locodium wasn’t about branding or market positioning. It was about acknowledging what the framework had become in practice.

Locodium emerged as a platform designed to support the consistent creation of business applications in any organisation through a set of carefully designed building blocks that encourage good architectural decisions by default.

At its core, Locodium reflects the same principles that shaped JAF:

• Applications should survive change
• Complexity should be surfaced, not hidden
• Speed should not come at the cost of maintainability
• Tooling should support developers, not replace their better judgement

Locodium provides structure with direction on how applications can be composed, data and rules are expressed in declarative ways, and systems can evolve.