Incremental Software Architecture

Chapter 3Technological System-Level Failures

We continue here with the technological reasons for system failures. This chapter covers a significant portion of the product development life cycle. It centers on the system design, implementation, testing, and operations. Once again, these failure levels emphasize the need for discovering and analyzing malfunctioning systems throughout the product development life cycle. And once more, the root cause analysis may ascertain that a system shutdown has been triggered by more than one level of failure. Indeed, it is a complex puzzle to resolve.

The technical reasons for a broken system may be found in the design process. This may be caused by unskilled staff. Wrong architecture strategy and mistaken employment of design patterns are other aspects that could defiantly miss the performance and quality mark of an implementation. When it comes to finding out why a system flops, the software development process is not excused from inspection, either. Lack of software construction talents or inadequate development tools and hardware could also affect the quality of a system. Ignoring potential software defects during the testing phase could be a crucial factor in a system failure. Finally, poor system maintenance in production could be another reason for a system operation fiasco.

Enterprise-Level Architecture Failures

It is recognized that design errors may be found in small implementations, such as in a software routine, library, component, ...