Three Questions That Help You Build a Better Software Architecture

"In any software development effort, there is always too much to do and not enough time or resources to do it all. The problem is that the number of things we could build is infinitely large, and our available time and resources are, by comparison, almost infinitely small. This applies especially to architecting. The art in software architecting is deciding what decisions need to be made now and which ones can wait."

"Making decisions involves answering critical questions, and there is an order in which certain questions need to be answered. Success in architecting involves rejecting false assumptions/assertions quickly and cheaply, using empiricism. In other words, find those alternatives that are wrong and costly quickly, and choose a better alternative. The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and its Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA) approach helps answer these questions."

Software development faces an excess of possible work and limited time and resources. Architecting requires prioritizing which decisions must be made now and which can wait. Decision-making follows an order: confirm business worth, determine needed performance and scalability, then specify maintainability and supportability. The most costly mistakes are building a product that is not worth building and building a system that cannot meet performance or scale requirements. Lifetime cost decisions affect maintainability and support. Empiricism and experimentation help reject wrong alternatives quickly and cheaply. The Minimum Viable Product and Minimum Viable Architecture help answer these critical questions.

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