Providing robust software solutions is one of the top objectives of defining software architecture design for applications at all scales. Emerging frameworks, evolving tech stacks, limited skillsets, time to market, and many other factors have constantly pressured Technical Architects to define the “Perfect” architecture.
Let’s talk about some of the challenges in defining this perfect architecture.
Emerging Architectural Practices
We live in an era of consistently evolving frameworks, technologies, approaches, guidelines, and architectural best practices. For example, Monolithic architectural choices are often challenged by Microservices Architecture. A software architect’s technology selection criteria need to be influenced by some careful considerations. An architect may pick a design choice in the beginning, but in a few months or years, there may be an emerging framework or underlying tech choice that could impact the significance of what could have been a design choice in the beginning. Building a cloud-native architecture from day one might require additional skill and initial development costs, even until the MVP or post-MVP pilot stage, which might not be necessary.
Changing Business Requirements
The only constant is change. Many factors compel business requirements to change, and any architecture that can absorb the change will best reduce costs associated with the corresponding technical implications of a business’s IT choices. Only some of the requirements are known until MVP is at least pilot-tested or at least until customers start using it. In situations where the legacy system migrations are relevant, the need to have a flexible and change-absorbent architecture becomes even more challenging because it is not easy to migrate to a new architect without the high cost, methodology, time, and effort as well as focus on fewer disruptions to existing systems.
Cost
Cost is one of the most significant factors. How much of the business budget is available? How much of the load can we accommodate? What are the resiliency and high availability requirements? How much should a business worry about spending now compared to the future?
A software architect must balance a quick win and a state-of-the-art generic software design that may require additional effort and cost. Software development life cycle optimizations are necessary for startups under such cost pressures.
Skillset Deficit
The technical team’s existing skillset also influences the choices made by the architects in light of other constraints. It is often seen, especially in the case of startups, that a team may not be very well equipped with a perfect choice that an architect might be looking to adopt due to various factors such as the learning curve, less training time pressure on the time to go live, additional cost & effort to hire the right talent quickly, unavailability of the desired resources, employee turnover, etc etc
Guiding Principles
So, what is the ideal solution? Architects at Aitina Tech are committed to considering these challenges when approaching software solutions for complex business processes.
- Application scalability solutions require the foundational principles to offer immense flexibility and adaptability from the beginning. By carefully considering the business objectives aligning with the product / services roadmap, the strategy needs to be crafted.
- Assuming that there will always be changing requirements or evolving and emerging technologies, the cost will become super relevant.
- A business needs to validate the idea, the concept in the light of promising ROI (Return on Investment). A solution that ensures ROI at an acceptable level requires that cost considerations are at the forefront because a post-MVP stage will definitely require some investment. Saving upfront money and validating the ideas as soon as possible will be beneficial for future application growth & technology adaptability.
- During the MVP stage, start planning on the challenges around skillset & resources availability. Prepare in advance that the the architecture will evolve and keep the business well informed about changing needs.
- Identify the areas of reusability and build small quick proof of concepts with small iterations to ensure that architecture will absorb the growth pains of the business without requiring huge investments.
- Loose coupling is a key. Making a change in a detachable Legois easier than breaking a cemented piece of a toy 🙂
- You will never have time to think about revamping security architecture so have the software system very well guarded from day one.
- Even at a small scale, performance optimisation architecture needs to be adopted so that a sudden spike in the system usage does not cause any issues (even at the MVP stage)
- Always keep in mind that the situation today might change when the business starts to grow. Lets stick to the basics of a software development i.e ensure maintainability, flexibility, scalability, security and most importantly always remember, there is nothing right or wrong in a software design. All we have to do is to justify our choices in the light of aforementioned principles.
Thanks for reading. In the future blogs, we will zoom into different architectural practices to talk about specifics of each approach and techniques.
