Software Architecture: The Hard Parts: Modern Trade-Off Analyses for Distributed Architectures

Zhamak Dehghani · Mark Richards · Neal Ford · Pramod Sadalage

Aug 2023 · Gildan Media · Narrated by Dena Dahilig

About this audiobook

There are no easy decisions in software architecture. Instead, there are many hard parts—difficult problems or issues with no best practices—that force you to choose among various compromises. With this book, you'll learn how to think critically about the trade-offs involved with distributed architectures.



Architecture veterans and practicing consultants Neal Ford, Mark Richards, Pramod Sadalage, and Zhamak Dehghani discuss strategies for choosing an appropriate architecture. By interweaving a story about a fictional group of technology professionals, they examine everything from how to determine service granularity, manage workflows and orchestration, manage and decouple contracts, and manage distributed transactions to how to optimize operational characteristics, such as scalability, elasticity, and performance.



This book provides techniques to help you discover and weigh the trade-offs as you confront the issues you face as an architect. You'll find out how to analyze trade-offs and effectively document your decisions; make better decisions regarding service granularity; understand the complexities of breaking apart monolithic applications; manage and decouple contracts between services; handle data in a highly distributed architecture; and learn patterns to manage workflow and transactions when breaking apart applications.

About the author

Mark Richards is an experienced, hands-on software architect involved in the architecture, design, and implementation of microservices architectures, service-oriented architectures, and distributed systems in a variety of technologies. Neal Ford is a director, software architect, and meme wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a software company and a community of passionate, purpose-led individuals who think disruptively to deliver technology to address the toughest challenges, all while seeking to revolutionize the IT industry and create positive social change. Zhamak Dehghani, creator of the data mesh concept, is a director of technology at ThoughtWorks, focusing on distributed systems architecture in the enterprise. She is a member of the company's Technology Advisory Board and contributes to the creation of ThoughtWorks's Technology Radar. Pramod Sadalage is a director at Thoughtworks, where he enjoys the rare role of bridging the divide between database professionals and application developers. He has coauthored several books, including Software Architecture: The Hard Parts, and is the author of Recipes for Continuous Database Integration.