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concept#Architecture#Software Engineering#Platform#Product

System Design

Conceptual guidelines for structuring and designing scalable, maintainable software systems.

System design defines principles and practices for structuring complex software systems.
Established
High

Classification

  • High
  • Technical
  • Architectural
  • Advanced

Technical context

CI/CD pipelines and deployment toolsObservability and monitoring platformsIdentity and access systems

Principles & goals

Clear separation of responsibilities and boundariesDesign for failure and operabilityExplicit consideration of non-functional requirements
Build
Enterprise, Domain, Team

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Wrong assumptions lead to cumbersome architectures
  • Insufficient consideration of operational aspects
  • Fragmentation due to inconsistent implementations
  • Early validation via prototypes and load tests
  • Explicit documentation of interfaces and assumptions
  • Automated testing and end-to-end monitoring

I/O & resources

  • Business and product requirements
  • Existing architecture and operational data
  • Non-functional requirements (SLA, security)
  • Architecture diagrams and specifications
  • Migration or implementation plans
  • Testing and operational requirements

Description

System design defines principles and practices for structuring complex software systems. It covers component, interface, and runtime decisions as well as non-functional requirements like scalability and reliability. The goal is to model clear architectures that ensure maintainability, performance, and adaptability in real-world products. It connects technical and organizational perspectives.

✔

  • Improved maintainability and team independence
  • Better scalability and performance characteristics
  • Reduced change risk through clear interfaces

✖

  • Initial design effort and increased complexity
  • Not every situation requires elaborate system design
  • Overdesign can impact speed and time-to-market

  • Time to market

    Duration from concept to production as a measure of delivery efficiency.

  • Mean Time to Recovery (MTTR)

    Average recovery time after failures to measure resilience.

  • Throughput (requests per second)

    Measurement of system processing capacity under load.

E‑commerce platform scaling

Architecture changes to support high traffic spikes and checkout resilience.

Migration to event-driven architecture

Transition from synchronous APIs to asynchronous event streams for decoupling.

Platform standardization

Introduction of common platform services and interface standards across teams.

1

Gather and prioritize requirements

2

Create and evaluate architecture designs

3

Iteratively implement, test, and adjust

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Uncleaned interfaces from quick hotfixes
  • Short-term architecture decisions without tests
  • Lack of automation for deploys and monitoring
Interface complexityData latency and throughputOrganizational alignment
  • Excessive fragmentation into many tiny services without need
  • Introducing complex patterns without metrics
  • Ignoring operational concerns during design
  • Not validating assumptions about load and growth
  • Over-reliance on proprietary platform features
  • Leaving governance and responsibilities unclear
System and software architectureNetwork and infrastructure knowledgeStakeholder communication skills
Scalability and load behaviorOperational resilience and recoverabilityTime to market and maintainability
  • • Existing legacy dependencies
  • • Budget and timeline constraints
  • • Regulatory and compliance requirements