Essential Architecture Framework: In the World of Overengineering, Being Essential Is the Answer

Before telling you how we found and executed an essential architecture framework for successful software, we need to remember the context we live here and, possibly, you will identify with it.

Following the history of software development, we have never had so many options for frameworks, programming languages, and project templates, and at the same time, we have never failed so much in meeting customer expectations.

In a world of so many complexities, an architecture framework was born that focuses on the essentials to achieve this goal.

After all, regardless of the language, methodologies, and frameworks, we all have a single goal: to make a product that impacts and brings results to your organization. Success is unanimously the goal, but achieving it is not trivial. You will see how throughout this text!

Achieving Success in Software: Why Is It So Difficult?

In an article from last year, Forbes listed 16 obstacles to successful software. It is possible to notice that, contrary to what we always imagine, in general, there is no lack of planning in most cases. What exists is too much planning.

Despite this, why can't we serve or satisfy customers?

It is common for developers to deliver a product that doesn't align with the customer's perceptions.

Among the various answers we can list, one, in particular, is found within the article: the unexpected complexity of engineering.

Complexity: One of the Biggest Villains for Successful Software

Among the most significant obstacles, the most recurrent and the most unwanted happen when we make an unnecessary effort for a path that will not bring success or the desired result. This often happens due to extreme complexity.

One of these symptoms happens almost paradoxically, considering the many tools we use to make everyday life easier and which, in fact, only makes it more difficult.

Many of these approaches make the environment more unproductive and can increase a development team's risk and probability of failure.

When we need help scaling teams, disseminating knowledge, finding the high risk in problem-solving, and unproductiveness, we have to stop and think a little about the current architecture of the project.

Software Architecture: Do We Still Need It?

Indeed, one of the most discussed points in recent years and, at the same time, the most difficult to find a definition is related to the term “software architecture”.

Several classic kinds of literature have a variation of the term, such as Just Enough Software Architecture; Software Architecture for Developer; and Neal Ford's four classic architecture books: Evolutionary Architecture, Software Architecture the Hard Part, Software Architecture Metrics, and Fundamentals of Software Architecture.

What they have in common is that the software architecture is linked to a point in the system that is difficult to modify and seen in the long term most of the time. It is in the architecture that we define the primary purpose of the software beyond the consequences of these choices.

An interesting point is in the two laws that were defined in the fundamentals of software architecture already mentioned above:

1. The why is more important than the how;
2. Every choice is based on trade-offs.

For fans of Simon Sinek, the first law of architecture comes with its golden circle, which we must always start with why.

The architecture is significant for the success of a solution since it is tied to the purpose and vision of the software in the short, medium, and long term. It will be present whether consciously, managed, and aligned with success; or unconsciously, where the team will be hostage to chance and unnecessary complexities.

Once the importance of architecture has been defined, how can we guarantee that we have it ready to achieve our goals? Fortunately, we have an excellent framework for you to ensure your and your organization's success: Essential Architecture: A Framework to Achieve Your Success Based on the Zup Experience.

The Essential Architecture Framework Is Valuable for Companies Looking To Stand Out in the Technology Market

Created by Zup Innovation, the framework is a product of the organization's years of experience serving the most diverse global impact technology market with new trends in the industry. The main point is that it is flexible, as there are no silver bullet solutions.

The framework is composed of four specialities, and each one has one or more items of capabilities. Naturally, each project tends to vary the number of capabilities in an application. However, the essentials of successful software will pass through application, cloud, security, and data.

Application

Ensuring that the code is maintained over the days is one of the biggest challenges within an organization. After all, it's essential to write quality software to the point where it's optional to rewrite the entire application every three or five-year cycle.

This speciality efficiently deals with building the software itself and is not exclusive to the backend, as well as The Twelve-Factor Application best practices.

Code quality, testing, documentation, resilience, and performance will be part of the back and front, focusing on mobile. Although many organizations do not imagine, low-quality software is expensive due to the complexity of solving and opening breaches such as code vulnerabilities. Last year alone, it is estimated that this cost in the US was 2.41 trillion dollars.

Cloud

Waste is a hot topic for many tech executives as a TCO reducer. Gartner estimates an expense of $600 Billion in 2023, of which studies indicate that 30% is related to avoidable costs.

This speciality comes to combating this type of waste and using the cloud's computational power to accelerate and modernize the current infrastructure. This speciality spans culture capabilities like DevOps, GitOps, DocOps, FinOps, to practices like observability (logging, tracing, and metrics) and infra as code.

Data

Defined as the new oil by Clive Humby in 2006, this definition has never been more alive and active: using existing data within the organization to leverage the generation and improvement of product information.

This speciality aims to bring all the powers in data to your organization with the prospect of revolutionizing current businesses or creating new ones. All this through decentralized ways like Data Mesh.

Security

It was listed last but not least. Security is one of the points that most impact an organization; after all, its failure will impact the product and the company's customer trust. In the OWASP Top Ten, it is estimated that most organizations have some vulnerability within their system.

This speciality aims to prevent headaches for the business and credibility within the organization in a preventive way. We can include here the culture of bringing security into automated development and testing processes within CI as static analysis, SAST within the DevSecOps culture, and data protection and cloud systems with cloud security.

Conclusion

Creating an architectural framework to leverage existing businesses and create new ones in a sustainable, safe, quality, and data-centric way is our greatest motivation, fueled by more than a decade of experience building this framework.

The critical point is that this essential architectural framework comes with others. It is integrated with StackSpot, a Zup product that aims, through the four specialities presented above, to enhance the success of software within your organization.