An experienced Architect does not need to go through every single step in the book to get a reasonable design done for a small web
application. Such Architects can use their experience to speed up the
process. Since I have done similar web applications before and have
understood my deliverable, I am going to take the faster approach to
get the initial part of our DMS design done. That will hopefully
assist me to shorten the length of this article.
For those who do not have experience, let me briefly mention the general steps that involved in architecturing a software below...
Understand the initial customer requirement - Ask questions and do research to further elaborate the requirement
Define the process flow of the system preferably in visual (diagram) form. I usually draw a process-flow diagram here. In my
effort, I would try to define the manual version of the system first
and then would try to convert that into the automated version while
identifying the processes and their relations. This process-flow
diagram that we draw here can be used as the medium to validate the
captured requirements with the customer too.
Identify the software development model that suite your requirements
When the requirements are fully captured and defined before the design start, you can use the 'Water-Fall' model. But when the
requirements are undefined, a variant of 'Spiral' can be used to deal
with that.
When requirements are not defined, the system gets defined while it is being designed. In such cases, you need to keep adequate spaces
in respective modules, which later expansions are expected.
Decide what architecture to be used. In my case, to design our Document Management System (DMS), I will be using a combination of
ASP.NET MVC and Multitier Architecture (Three Tier Variant).
Analyze the system and identify its modules or sub systems.
Pick one sub system at a time and further analyze it and identify all granular level requirements belonging to that part of the systems.
Recognize the data entities and define the relationships among entities (Entity Relationship Diagram or ER Diagram). That can
followed by identifying the business entities (Some business entities
directly map with the classes of your system) and define the business
process flow.
Organized your entities. This is where you normalize your database, and decide what OOP concepts and design pattern to be used
etc.
Make your design consistent. Follow the same standards across all modules and layers. This includes streamlining the concepts (as an
example, if you have used two different design patterns in two
different modules to achieve the same goal, then pick the better
approach and use that in both the places), and conventions used in the
project.
Tuning the design is the last part of the process. In order to do this, you need to have a meeting with the project team. In that
meeting you need to present your design to your team and make them ask
questions about it. Take this as an opportunity to honestly evaluate/
adjust your design.
