5 Important Key Principles of Software Architecture for Better Design
IT and software development in general have been dominated by Software Architecture. It simplifies and understands the management of solutions within your company. As for the software developers working on the project, it is also helpful, whether it is a web app or a mobile app, that there is accurate and clear communication between the rest of the team members and the software developers.
What is Software Architecture?
The term “Software Architecture” refers to a set of system structures composed by elements (objects, threads, logicals and physicals, classes, components, etc.) which have properties that can be seen from an external vantage point, as well as their relationships with each other.
As part of the architecture, you should:
- Display the system’s structure but hide its implementation details.
- Implement all scenarios and use cases.
- Take into account the needs of several stakeholders.
- Ensure both quality and functionality.
Listed below are the Key Principles of Software Architecture for Better Design
Solid Principles
In addition to software development, the SOLID principles also apply to system architecture.
Let’s look at…
1. Single Responsibility Principle
It is recommended that a capability (such as a service, module, or API) have no more than one purpose. The users are better informed of the intended purpose when the responsibilities are narrow, leading to fewer errors.
2. Open-Closed Principle
Essentially, this principle suggests that extending a system behavior is preferable to changing it. A key component of an application’s longevity is its ability to adapt to new functionality with minimal changes to existing components, even though anticipating changes ahead of time is rarely a good idea (as it can lead to bloated designs).
3. Liskov Substitution Principle
Essentially, this refers to derived classes being interchangeable with their bases, but how this applies to Distributed Architecture is that two services interact effectively when they have a ‘contract’ that defines inputs/outputs, structures and constraints between them.
In other words: there should be no changes to the correctness of a system in the case of two distributed components with the same contract.
4. Interface Segregation Principle
Clients should have fine-grained interfaces/contracts so that calls aren’t dependent on functionality they aren’t using. This is in alignment with Single Responsibility: when we break apart interfaces, we promote composition through role separation, and decoupling by breaking down unneeded responsibilities between derivative modules.
5. Dependency Inversion Principle
There should be no dependency between high-level and low-level modules; they should both be abstraction-based. The same applies to abstractions and details, the latter should depend on the former. Thus, the concept of interface abstraction is applied to software components and layers at the higher and lower levels thereby removing the dependencies between them.
The Least Principles
The ‘Least’ principles are grouped together due to the naming convention:
- The principle of Least Astonishment
The principle of least surprise (or least astonishment) states that solutions or approaches should not surprise anyone knowledgeable about a particular subject when they encounter them for the first time (the audience may differ e.g. end-users, developers, testers). A more practical definition is that the principle aims to reduce learners’ learning curves by leveraging their pre-existing knowledge, so anything with a high degree of predictability should be redesigned.
A domain model is a way of keeping track of all aspects of architecture from component naming services all the way through to visualizing user interfaces and design of the domain model.
- The principle of Least Effort
(Also called Zipf’s Law)This principle emerges from a fundamental human characteristic: We tend to follow those paths that are as effortless as possible. In other words, if our designs follow a particular pattern, then the next developer will inevitably follow that pattern until they discover a significantly easier way to complete the task, in which case they will change! If they find an acceptable solution to a task, they do not need to make immediate changes.
Minimum effort means the least amount of effort.
Therefore, it is imperative to put in place the correct architecture from the get-go: setting high expectations and making sure no quality is compromised during the project’s lifespan and that it will be adhered to even if there are future changes.
One of the great advantages of this principle is its extrapolation: once we use it to create a framework, we create a foundation for future systems we create. In other words, we can create a template for managing the organization’s software systems that is successful and future-proof.
