Righting Software

3. Structure

The previous chapter discussed the universal design principle of volatility-based decomposition. This principle governs the design of all practical systems—from houses, to laptops, to jumbo planes, to your own body. To survive and thrive, they all encapsulate the volatility of their constituent components. Software architects only have to design software systems. Fortunately, these systems share common areas of volatility. Over the years I have found these common areas of volatility within hundreds of systems. Furthermore, there are typical interactions, constraints, and run-time relationships between these common areas of volatility. If you recognize these, you can produce correct system architecture quickly, efficiently, and effectively. ...