97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know

Chapter 26. Reuse Is About People and Education, Not Just Architecture

Jeremy Meyer has been designing and developing software for nearly 20 years, as well as teaching its mastery. He is currently a principal consultant for Borland Software in its modeling and design space.

—Jeremy Meyer

YOU MIGHT ADOPT THE APPROACH that a framework that is well designed, or an architecture that is carefully considered and cleverly implemented, will lend itself to reuse within your organization. The truth is that even the most beautiful, elegant, and reusable architecture, framework, or system will only be reused by people who:

Know It's There

Within your organization, developers or designers need to know that a design, framework, library, or fragment of code exists, and where they can find all the critical information about these elements (e.g., documentation, versions, and compatibility) in order to reuse them. It is a simple, logical truth that people won't look for things that they don't believe exist. You are more likely to succeed with reusable elements if the information about them is "pushed."

There are any number of methods for pushing information about reusable elements in an organization. These range from wiki pages with an RSS feed providing update information, useful in very large teams, to email announcing version updates in the source repository. In a tiny team, the designer or lead developer ...