Design It! (PragProg)

Don’t engineer by coincidence—design it like you mean it! Grounded by fundamentals and filled with practical design methods, this is the perfect introduction to software architecture for programmers. Ask the right questions, explore your options, share your decisions, and facilitate collaboration. Use your new skills to guide and influence your team in developing awesome software.

Michael Keeling @michaelkeeling

Edited by Susannah Davidson Pfalzer

Don’t engineer by coincidence—design it like you mean it! Grounded by fundamentals and filled with practical design methods, this is the perfect introduction to software architecture for programmers. Ask the right questions, explore your options, share your decisions, and facilitate collaboration. Use your new skills to guide and influence your team in developing awesome software.

Uncover the big ideas behind software architecture and learn practical methods for designing software systems. Gain a framework for thinking about design, enabling you to plan, implement, and evaluate software architectures. Explore alternatives, balance trade-offs, and manage risks. Make architecture real with powerful sketches, engaging stories, and lean documentation. Evaluate your designs using lightweight methods and harness the power of your team to improve the architecture.

Hands-on exercises, real-world scenarios, and team-based decision-making tools will help you become a confident software architect.


“Michael’s style is inclusive: everyone on the team should become a better architect. His book gives us hands-on ways to achieve this by collecting many great ideas and tools that arose from the community. This book is for everyone who wants to build better software together.”

–Thijmen de Gooijer, IT architect, Kommuninvest Sweden


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