Just enough software architecture

What Hacker News says

1. hoerzuDec 2024
   Here is a list so far: - Designing data intensive applications

   - Just Enough Software Architecture

   - Domain Driven Design - Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software (Eric Evans) I recommend this one more than Vaughn Vernon's DDD.

   - Clean Architecture (Robert Martin)

   - Fundamentals of Software Architecture: an Engineering Approach

   - Design Patterns (Gamma et al)

   - Site Reliability Engineering: How Google Runs Production Systems

   - Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Signature Series (Fowler))

   - Refactoring to Patterns

   - Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture

   -Head First Design Patterns Building Extensible and Maintainable Object Oriented Software and I

   - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odxOPxYJdjg

   - "Architecture Modernization: Socio-technical alignment of software, strategy, and structure"

   - Software Architecture in Practice

   - Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond

   - Head first: Software Architecture

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2. brushfootAug 2020
   George Fairbanks's book _Just Enough Software Architecture: A Risk-Driven Approach_ comes to mind.

   Fairbanks points out that there's risk in every design. How much it should influence your architecture depends on how much it matters to your project.

   He uses the example of installing a mailbox. You shouldn't approach that with the same level of planning you'd use to architect a building. They're similar projects in some sense, but risk with the former is so much lower that it isn't worth it.

   In this case, for some projects, the risk of low accessibility might be significant enough that it should be high priority. For others, dependency churn or framework bloat might be higher. Or tooling capabilities. It depends on what you're building.

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3. mikhailfrancoJul 2017
   An experienced architect will always do this. Often the most risky subproblem is the one that is least understood (unknown unknowns), which needs to be investigated, even if it turns out not to be a great risk. In agile-speak this is called 'spike solution'. Also see lean architecture methods, such as:

   - 'Just Enough Software Architecture', by George Fairbanks.

   - 'Risk and Cost Driven Architecture', by Eltjo Poort.

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4. bduronOct 2026
   I haven’t seen the risk-driven approach explicitly mentioned here. I think it applies not only to code review, but especially to design.

   It reminds me of George Fairbanks’ Just Enough Software Architecture. He tells a story about his father, a civil engineer, who didn’t apply every engineering technique he knew when installing a mailbox. He just dug a hole, put in a post, and filled it with concrete.

   The idea is simple: the effort you spend on architecture should be proportional to the risks involved. Sometimes you need careful analysis, sometimes you don’t.

   Seems even more relevant now with AI coding.

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