I strongly believe that the concepts like OOAD (Object Oriented Analysis and Design) and Design Patterns contribute to make an application well designed and flexible in a very positive way. But over the years I have seen myself and some of my colleagues struggling to decide where to start first in the software design phase when a new project arrives.
Should we list all the memorized design patterns first and search in the requirement list for the scope to apply those?
Should we think of the basic OO concepts like encapsulation, polymorphism or inheritance (“is-a” or “has-a”) and start designing the classes according to those at the first place ?
Often many developers loose the way on their inability to prioritize these processes and thinks too much of theoretical Analysis and Design without concentrating on solving the problem on hand first. I have also faced this problem which is popularly termed as “Analysis Paralysis” in the Software Analysis and Design Books.
I have found an excellent guideline of prioritizing these processes in the book “Head First Object Oriented Analysis and Design” by O’Reilly publication. The guideline suggests that:
1. We should concentrate on solving the problem on hand first with the best possible algorithm and make sure that the software does exactly what the customer expects from it. In a nutshell, if the customer does not recognize the validity of the software, all hard work on Analysis, design, patterns, best practices, latest and greatest technologies gone in vain my friend.
2. After making the software workable, we should apply basic OO principles to make the software flexible by eliminating the duplicate codes and improving a bad design.
3. Finally we should strive for applying proven design patterns so that the software is easy to extend and reuse.
I just wanted to share these principles and priorities with you and believe that remembering the priorities will be helpful to choose the right path while designing and developing software.
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