Understanding software architecture

Different ways to look at architecture

There are several ways to look at architecture, each with a different scope:

• Enterprise architecture deals with the whole company or even a group of companies. It takes a holistic approach and is concerned about the strategy of whole enterprises. When thinking about enterprise architecture, you should be looking at how all the systems in a company behave and cooperate with each other. It's concerned about the alignment between business and IT.
• Solution architecture is less abstract than its enterprise counterpart. It stands somewhere in the middle between enterprise and software architecture. Usually, solution architecture is concerned with one specific system and the way it interacts with its surroundings. A solution architect needs to come up with a way to fulfill a specific business need, usually by designing a whole software system or modifying existing ones.
• Software architecture is even more concrete than solution architecture. It concentrates on a specific project, the technologies it uses, and how it interacts with other projects. A software architect is interested in the internals of the project's components.
• Infrastructure architecture is, as the name suggests, concerned about the infrastructure that the software will use. It defines the deployment environment and strategy, how the application will scale, failover handling, site reliability, and other infrastructure-oriented aspects.
• Solution architecture is based on both software and infrastructure architectures to satisfy the business requirements. Later in this chapter, we will talk about both those aspects to prepare you for both small- and large-scale architecture design. Let's now discuss another critical aspect of understanding software architecture.

Communication and culture

The focus of this book is software architecture. Why would we want to mention communication and culture in a book around software, then? If you think about it, all software is written by people for people. The human aspect is prevalent and yet we often fail to admit it.As an architect, your role won't be just about figuring out the best approach to solving a given problem. You'll also have to communicate your proposed solution to your team members. Often, the choices you make will result from previous discussions. These are the reasons communication and team culture also play a role in software architecture.Conway's Law states that the architecture of the software system reflects the organization that's working on it. This means that building great products requires building great teams and understanding that social interaction impacts the success or failure of projects.Development culture can be compared to an ecosystem. It is a daily work and cannot be introduced by decree. The culture can become destructive if you don’t take care of it. Poor management can degrade even a well-established team culture within an organization.Thus, if you want to be a great architect, learning people skills may be as important as learning technical ones.Now that we have looked at both technical and social aspects of software architecture, let’s answer one fundamental question: why is architecture important?