Khaled Alghazaly خالد الغزالي’s Post

Should We Always Follow Architectural Design Patterns? Here's the first misconception: architectural design patterns are often seen as a set of "proven best practices" for guiding your software development. But this is misleading. These patterns aren't universally "proven." They're examples that worked in specific contexts and domains, but that doesn’t mean they are one-size-fits-all solutions. * Sometimes, the original authors were clear about where their approach worked and where it didn’t. * Other times, they overgeneralized their successes, failing to recognize how their circumstances were unique. * Occasionally, biases from bad experiences with a particular technology influenced their recommendations. Every architectural pattern should be studied, but treated as a starting point, not a rigid rule. At the end of the day, your goal is to satisfy your customers. Their needs for quality, speed, and efficiency might differ from what a pattern—or an expert selling a book—suggests. The real challenge is not "developing a feel" for patterns, but delivering results that work in your specific context. #SoftwareArchitecture #SoftwareDevelopment #CustomerSuccessS

How modular design principles can boost your team productivity, reduce technical debt, and create a foundation for sustainable growth? Modular architecture is the future of software design As software systems grow increasingly complex, modular architecture has emerged as a powerful approach for designing large-scale applications. Here's why it matters: 🔹Flexibility: Modules can be customized, enabled/disabled, and developed independently, allowing systems to evolve and adapt. 🔹Reduced dependencies: Modules communicate through well-defined interfaces, minimizing tight coupling. 🔹Third-party extensions: External developers can create modules, fostering innovation and collaboration. 🔹Scalability: Modular design enables building massive applications by breaking them into manageable components. 🔹Reusability: Well-designed modules can be reused across projects, boosting productivity. Key concepts include module interaction, registration, structure, and configuration. While challenges like architectural mismatches exist, the benefits of modularity - including improved maintainability and development agility - make it a cornerstone of modern software architecture. As software architects, embracing modular design principles can help us create more flexible, scalable, and maintainable systems. Checkout the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/gbmSbBnF What is your experience with modular architecture? #SoftwareArchitecture #ModularDesign #SoftwareEngineering

🌟 What’s the Difference Between #Design and #Architecture in Software? As software engineers, we often come across the terms design and architecture. But what do they really mean, and how do they differ? 🤔 The truth is, there’s no real difference between the two! Both represent a continuum of decisions that shape the structure of a system, from the highest-level abstraction to the smallest details. Just like the architect designing a home, where every aspect—from the layout of the rooms to the placement of light switches—is part of the same unified plan, software design and architecture work together in the same way. 🔑 Key Takeaways: 1️⃣ High-level architecture provides the shape and structure of the system. 2️⃣ Low-level design focuses on the details that support the architecture. 3️⃣ Both are interconnected, forming a continuous fabric that defines the system. This holistic approach ensures that we build scalable, maintainable, and efficient software systems. Let’s not separate design and architecture but treat them as one unified discipline! 💡 What do you think? How do you approach design and architecture in your projects? #SoftwareEngineering #CleanArchitecture #DesignPrinciples

Architectural Styles: Shaping Systems for Success In software architecture, the style you choose isn't just about aesthetics—it's about constraints. An architectural style places specific constraints on design, including the types of elements and the relationships allowed between them. These constraints guide the "shape" of the architecture, influencing its properties and capabilities. Take microservices, for example: ✔ Single Responsibility: Each service focuses on one specific function. ✔ Independence: Services operate independently, enabling scalability and fault tolerance. ✔ Data Privacy: Services own their data, avoiding shared dependencies. By adhering to these constraints, microservices deliver key benefits: independent deployments, fault isolation, faster updates, and adaptability to new technologies. But here's the catch: every architectural style comes with trade-offs. It's not about blindly following principles—it's about understanding why a style works for your needs. Pragmatism is key; sometimes relaxing a constraint makes more sense than striving for perfection. Before choosing an architecture: 1️⃣ Identify the problem you're solving. 2️⃣ Prioritize business drivers and architecture characteristics (NFRs). 3️⃣ Build consensus among stakeholders. Remember, architecture isn't "set it and forget it." Continuous validation, measurement, and fine-tuning are crucial to long-term success. Switching styles can be costly, so investing effort up front can save time and resources down the line. What’s your approach to balancing architectural purity with pragmatic decision-making? Let’s discuss! 💡  #architecture #microservices #ArchitecturalStyles #TechLeadership #DigitalTransformation #OrganisationalCulture #WorkplaceInnovation #software #technology #negotiator #enterprisearchitecture #EA

Top 4 Things in Software Design That People Don’t talk about... 1. Most design decisions are influenced by budgets. Whether it’s the infrastructure, tools, or architecture, cost considerations quietly shape everything. 2. Often, the choice of framework or tools in a project boils down to what the decision-maker is most comfortable with, even if better options are available. 3. Time-to-Market Pressure rule the world. Deadline to ship fast often drives the final design approach. 4. As products evolve, older design choices stop making sense, but instead of fixing them, new feature code is built around these Tech debt. The result? A growing tangled web of complexity. What do you think? Share your own points in the comments!

The biggest pain point with enterprise applications is a lack of structure. Every project uses a different approach, making it difficult to transfer technical knowledge from one system to another. Thankfully, there are proven approaches to solving this problem. My favorite? Clean Architecture. Clean architecture isn't revolutionary. You must follow one crucial principle: inner layers can't reference outer layers. Essentially, we're applying dependency inversion on the application level. Inner layers define abstractions, and outer layers implement these abstractions. You can package Clean Architecture across multiple projects. This is the most common approach with a Domain, Application, Infrastructure, and Presentation project. However, you can also group components for a single feature. This is called a vertical slice, and it improves the cohesion of your design. What are the benefits of Clean architecture? - Modularity - Separation of concerns - Testability of business logic - Improved team productivity - Loose coupling of components There's no "right" way to build software. You should decide what works for you. Clean architecture works well for me. I've used it to build excellent products. And I will continue to use it and talk about it. You should design your architecture to "scream" what the system is about.

The secret weapon of successful software architecture work is asking questions. There's too much focus on: • Jumping straight into design • Relying solely on experience • Solving problems that don’t exist And not enough focus on: • Understanding the real problem • Exploring the business context • Clarifying assumptions with stakeholders Here's the harsh truth: Your ability to ask questions directly shapes the success of your architecture. And asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness. It's the first step toward building solutions that actually fit. So don't design in silence. How many failed projects will it take before you start asking? #SoftwareArchitecture #AskQuestions #SecretWeapon #BeSuccessful

🔥Architectural Styles, Patterns and Design Patterns: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭'𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞? All three concepts are related to building software systems but focus on different detail and scope levels. Architectural Style: This is the big-picture approach to designing a software system. It defines a set of high-level principles and constraints for structuring the system. Architectural Pattern: This is a reusable solution to address common architectural challenges within a chosen style. It provides more specific guidance on how to implement an architectural style. Design Pattern deals with specific problems within a software component or class. It offers a well-established approach to solving recurring design problems. [♻️ 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭, 𝐬𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐭𝐨𝐨] 🚀 Learn something new every day! #softwaresystem #systemdesign #patterns #principles

Software (and Enterprise) Architecture are both incredibly valuable disciplines. It's easy to write off these practices due to concerns about hierarchy, selfish agenda or power games. But, I also see an increasing amount of software being delivered without a solid core of high-level guiding design helping multiple teams work well together. It's possible to achieve good outcomes by agreeing team contracts and constructing teams so that their topologies align with the desired service architecture. But, in many cases, someone needs to imagine that architecture before the teams exist, or before existing teams are assigned responsibility. I wish there was a good deal more architectural thinking in our engineering practices

Usually when I'm doing an architectural review, the client is surprised to learn that a lot of the difficulty around change, is actually about people, and not software systems. So it makes a change to find a situation where there are actually some decent wins to be had from looking at code. Many years ago, I found a situation where architects had arbitrarily chopped a solution up into some chunks, which they had deemed to be how the business should work with the code. In their opinion, the solution should have been carved up that way from the start. So it was hastily refactored, and off they went. In my opinion, you can see bad code from across the room, and you can see poor solution design from space. So I don't need to drop on a developer's shoulder and smirk at their deeply nested conditional code. Because that is just plain rude, and there's no place for it. What I was able to point out to the director in charge, was the symptom of people literally going on foot to another office, to ask if someone could check the changes in. Sometimes it was to ask if someone could make a change and check it in, so that development could continue. In fact, based on the number of people milling around, it was easy to see that the new architecture was wasting around 30% of the working day. Why? Because the logical and physical separation of the solution was not aligned. Sure you can chop a solution up to reflect the business organisation. But you ought to ask the business to get involved in verifying that you've got that split right. More importantly, you should really think about a strategy for moving toward that alignment, and make provision for the odd thing that doesn't fit, and needs some different triage. Just chopping a large solution up, and declaring that it is right, simply doesn't cut it. It is interesting to move towards the tech on a project, but even when the issue is very obviously the technology. The change required is still very much about people.