Design from Fred Brook’s Perspective

System design is not artistic design.
- Function over form.
- Never sacrifice functionality for aesthetics.
Design is planning, implementation, and interaction.
Implementation reveals design problems, interaction reveals implementation problems.
- “You need to do the next step to see what mistakes you made”.
- Often details don’t translate into implementation.
- Design models need to account for iteration, or else there will be no opportunity to correct oversights or mistakes.
There are some areas and types of software that are better understood than others.
- Routine designs do exist for software.
- Original designs tend to be for new things.
- If you are going to do new things you will need to decide if the traditional design paradigms are still applicable.

Waterfall Model (winston Royce)

Assumes that you know what the core problem or issue that needs to be addressed.
Designers don’t operate well using this ridged series of steps.
Didn’t take into account iteration.

If nobody is in charge than there is no accountability, requirement or responsibility.
Results in a wish list, or unrealistic list of requirements
Requirements Bloat: when you have made too many requirements introduced initially
Requirements Creep: when unnecessary requirements are added mid-development and divert focus

Software is typically developed in teams, especially at a commercial level.
Commercial software is becoming more complicated, and it requires niche expertise.
Telecommunications is becoming a more prevalent element of development.
In the 19th and 20th century, most large tech breakthroughs where the product of one or two individuals.
Teams are more common and require different management styles and result in a loss of conceptual integrity (focus).
Teams are useful to make software quicker; that being said, adding more people to a late project does not ship it out faster.
Software development is often difficult to partition and integrate; there often aren’t clear boundaries between elements of a program.
Adding team members increases the number of paths of communication exponentially.
Ultimately collaboration is important because it shortest the time for completion.
Different stakeholders will have a different perspective on design and different concerns.
- ie. sales, marketing, client, developer, etc.