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Principles of software architecture
“Software architecture encompasses the set of significant decisions
about the organization of a software system including the selection of
the structural elements and their interfaces by which the system is
composed; behavior as specified in collaboration among those elements;
composition of these structural and behavioral elements into larger
subsystems; and an architectural style that guides this organization.
Software architecture also involves functionality, usability,
resilience, performance, reuse, comprehensibility, economic and
technology constraints, tradeoffs and aesthetic concerns.”
Key Architecture Principles
Consider the following key principles when designing your architecture:- Build to change instead of building to last. Consider how the application may need to change over time to address new requirements and challenges, and build in the flexibility to support this.
- Model to analyze and reduce risk. Use design tools, modeling systems such as Unified Modeling Language (UML), and visualizations where appropriate to help you capture requirements and architectural and design decisions, and to analyze their impact. However, do not formalize the model to the extent that it suppresses the capability to iterate and adapt the design easily.
- Use models and visualizations as a communication and collaboration tool. Efficient communication of the design, the decisions you make, and ongoing changes to the design, is critical to good architecture. Use models, views, and other visualizations of the architecture to communicate and share your design efficiently with all the stakeholders, and to enable rapid communication of changes to the design.
- Identify key engineering decisions. Use the information in this guide to understand the key engineering decisions and the areas where mistakes are most often made. Invest in getting these key decisions right the first time so that the design is more flexible and less likely to be broken by changes.
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