Software Design X-Rays

Software Architecture Is About Making Choices

Software architecture is as much about boxes and arrows as archeology is about shovels. While sketching boxes may be useful as part of a discussion, the real software architecture manifests itself as a set of principles and guidelines rather than a static structure captured in PowerPoint. Such architectural principles work as constraints that limit our design choices to ensure consistency and ease of reasoning in the resulting solution.

A software architecture also goes beyond purely technical concerns, as it needs to address the collaborative model of the people building the system. The general idea is to minimize the coordination and synchronization needs between different teams to achieve short ...