Software architecture then, is it important? The agile and software craftsmanship movements are helping to push up the quality of the software systems that we build, which is excellent. Together they are helping us to write better software that better meets the needs of the business while carefully managing time and budgetary constraints. But there’s still more we can do because even a small amount of software architecture can help prevent many of the problems that projects face. Successful software projects aren’t just about good code and sometimes you need to step away from the code for a few moments to see the bigger picture.
A lack of software architecture causes problems
Since software architecture is aboutstructure and vision, you could say that it exists anyway. And I agree, it does. Having said that, it’s easy to see how not thinking about software architecture (and the “bigger picture”) can lead to a number of common problems that software teams face on a regular basis. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your software system have a well-defined structure?
- Is everybody on the team implementing features in a consistent way?
- Is there a consistent level of quality across the code base?
- Is there a shared vision for how the software will be built across the team?
- Does everybody on the team have the necessary amount of technical guidance?
Conclusion
It is possible to successfully deliver a software project by answering “no” to some of these questions, but it does require a very good team and a lot of luck. If nobody thinks about software architecture, the end result is something that typically looks like a big ball of mud¹. Sure, it has a structure but it’s not one that you’d want to work with! Other side effects could include the software system being too slow, insecure, fragile, unstable, hard to deploy, hard to maintain, hard to change, hard to extend, etc
