The Importance of Good Software Architecture for Your Business

You, as a business owner, are interested in a high standard realization of your final product, and software architecture, in turn, is a mechanism for achieving this goal. It is a mechanism for building a quality product that performs specific tasks and meets specific requirements.

In this article, openGeeksLab has outlined why good software architecture is a must for your business.

What Do You Get With Poorly Designed Architecture?

The tasks that a software product will perform affect architecture, but they are not crucial in defining it. Architecture will complete the task that needs to be performed. Questions arise concerning the requirements.

Software architecture is selected depending on specific requirements and tasks. Separately worth noting the fact that if you assign a separate set of tasks, a development company can take for itself the most straightforward architectural product solutions.

Therefore, businesses often have problems after a product launch. During testing, everything was fine. As soon as a project is released, in real conditions, when a load increases, critical situations arise, a software product ceases to cope with these problems since architecture is not able to comply with the requirements.

What Do You Get With Good Software Product Architecture?

There may be various software requirements for a product. Let’s take a look at the simplest types of requirements:

1. Big data processing (applying Big Data algorithms).
2. Performing a large number of operations. When a large number of users simultaneously performs a large number of actions. Anything more than 10.000 operations per second belongs to the category of high-load apps.
3. Multilevel computing. When a user requests it is not enough to perform any one operation, you need to perform a series of operations, which, respectively, leads to a long wait for a user.
4. Scalability. So that at a certain point when a project is no longer able to cope with a load, it was possible to use additional computational tools without interfering with the program code.
5. Extendibility. It means a project functionality extension without interfering with the program code of the previous part and without disabling the currently operating part of the project.
6. Application deployment on a particular platform or cross-platform deployment. For example, with Node.js, it doesn’t matter where to work, while ASP.NET runs on Windows servers. It will significantly affect the issue of scalability or extensibility.
7. Application modes — online or offline. If we talk about a mobile application, then it has two modes, online and offline. If we talk about backend, then the option of partial deployment of the project is possible when one part of the functionality is included, and another part is not included.
8. Parts reuse. For example, there is a software product with authorization. You place a second order for related software. In this case, you can use the same authorization — if a user is registered in one application, then he or she is automatically registered in another app. As a result, you save development time and provide consumers with ease of use. Business needs to consider in advance so that programmers leave room for OAuth implementation.
9. B2B interaction mechanisms. Working with clients and businesses requires an entirely different approach. When working with a client, he or she has logged in and performs any actions inside an application. When a business is authorized, there is a whole other functionality, another access control mechanism, and limits on capabilities.
10. Multilingual data and / or interfaces
11. The need for logging or versioning data. Logging means storing data on who did something, what exactly, and when. Versioning means the same, plus keeping all changes.
12. Interaction with external resources — third-party software such as API, SDK, etc.
13. Applying automated testing, unit tests, UI tests. Even minimal automated testing removes about half of bugs during development.

Architecture is built based on requirements and functionality. Good architecture is one that meets these tasks and requirements and can complete them.

Benefits of Software Development Architecture

Among other benefits, in addition to full compliance with the requirements, applying an architectural approach to the development itself provides certain advantages to your product:

1. The adequately chosen architecture itself is a standard for writing code and is a requirement for a development team how to write and where. As a result, the program code becomes of the same type which simplifies further product support.
2. If architecture has been sufficiently detailed during development, this significantly reduces the likelihood of logical errors in the program code, reduces the possibility that the program code does not work as you expect. It is provided that the requirements and functionality of the project have not changed in the development process.
3. When building architecture, in any case, business analytics of a project should be conducted. As a result, contractors detect many logical errors of a software product even before development starts, which, again, reduces the number of bugs in the final product. It is provided that a sufficient amount of time was allocated for architecture development, and it was carried out before contractors start writing the program code. The more complex the project, the longer the period of building architecture.
4. With a detailed architecture, development time estimate becomes more accurate.

Software Architecture Design Patterns

There is a concept of classical software architecture design patterns (classical architectural solutions). The most common are MVC, MVM, Viper, Flux, various service-oriented architecture (SOA) options, common query responsibility segregation (CQRS), and many others.

On average, such solutions can meet approximately 80% of requirements. 20% are the most problematic, and the majority of time on architecture building is spent on them. These 20% are unique to your software product.

As a result, the first proposal from developers for applied architecture will be available almost immediately. Accordingly, after a simple Internet search, you can find out the main advantages and disadvantages of the proposed architecture and discuss them with developers for further work. Classic is important not only for developers but also for a business owner. If developers can not give an answer, then it is worth considering whether to cooperate with them.

It is important to understand that in different sources the same architecture can be described in different ways. For example, for SOA architectures, the most authoritative are Martin Fowler’s works.

What to Build and How to Build

You are going to develop an application. Let’s say that your project requirements are:

1. You need a high load application for processing large amounts of information with a complex structure. It requires more than 200 thousand operations per second and a load of world social networks.
2. Project features are continually expanding. Meanwhile, the minimum functionality will not change after its launch.
3. Providing a minimum response time to user request when processing data.
4. The first project launch is conducted at minimum computing capacity with its gradual growth as and when necessary.
5. Logging operations must be submitted in the system.
6. Applying minimum unit tests.

It is an example of a set of requirements without specifying the project functionality. When mentioning such tasks, an experienced architect would almost immediately refer to one of SOA software varieties, Martin Fowler’s microservice architecture using CQRS to reduce user response time. The main principle of development would be SOLID. You can google these items. When choosing some architects, it is reasonable to select among those who provide you with architecture that is built to last and who can ensure your system quality and longevity.

We at openGeeksLab know everything about innovative architectural solutions and making fundamental structural choices to achieve your business goals. Drop us a line, and we’ll be delighted to assist you in meeting your challenges.

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This article was originally published on the openGeeksLab blog.