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net February 2020

The IDesign Method

Management Overview

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What is The IDesign Method

The IDesign Method (The Method) is a structured design methodology for producing the system architecture and the
design of the project to build the system.

With system design, The Method lays out a way of breaking down a system into small modular software components
used as building blocks. The Method offers guidelines for the structure and role of the components and how these
components should interact, producing the architecture (high level software structure) of the system. The Method
maximizes the ability to quickly respond to changes in the business (agility) by producing a small set of simple
composable components that encapsulate changes. Through this, the architecture itself remains valid for a very long
time without needing to change each time the requirements change. The result is minimizing the total cost of
ownership, minimizing complexity, and maximizing quality.

With project design The Method provides management with several options for building the system, using the
architecture as a key input for designing the project. Each option is some combination of schedule, cost, and risk. This
allows decision makers to choose the best option, to drive educated decisions and to maximize the probability of the
project successfully meeting its commitments.

As such, The Method is a two-part formula:

The Method = System Design + Project Design

The combination of system and project design offers strong competitive advantages for the business, compared with
other design techniques that produce unmanageable, complex software, and that also offer no notion of time or cost.
Unfortunately, the consequences of such out of control software are horrendous waste, longer projects, and frequent
delays. Over time, such poorly-designed systems always end up with a prohibitive level of technical debt, leading to a
re-write, that in turn often just repeats the mistakes of the past but on a larger scale.

Additional advantages of The Method include minimizing the required staffing level, lower turnover rate (people prefer
working in a Method environment), low stress, high level of trust across the organization, improved customer
satisfaction and retention, and reduced management risk.

The Method is used across hundreds of projects the world over, and has been in use for more than 20 years, with
consistent repeatable results. In late 2019, Juval Löwy published a description of The Method in his book, Righting
Software (Addison-Wesley Professional).

Audience
The purpose of this document is to inform business executives, business managers, project managers, product
marketing managers, VPs of IT, CIOs and CTOs about the value produced by the IDesign Method, while avoiding diving
into technical aspects. Software architects and software developers would benefit from reading this as well.

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System Design Approach

Most systems today have a design and architecture that is characterized with severe technical debt, lack of ability to
respond to changes, low quality, and inability to project time, cost, and risk. This is a direct result of the way most
systems are designed, where the architecture reflects the required functionality of the system. Consequently, when
the requirements change, the system architecture will also have to change, inflicting appalling cost and pain on all
involved. When the design is based on functionality, the changes by definition are spread across multiple places in
the system code.

To counter this behavior The Method prescribes designing the system based on volatility – identifying areas of change
in the system, and encapsulating these in components. The required behaviors of the system are the integrations of
these components. Now when the requirements change, the changes are contained and are not spread across the
architecture and the existing software. Conceptually, the architecture is a series of vaults, where each of the vaults
(as a component of the architecture) encapsulates some volatility. Now when a change happens, it is contained inside
one of the vaults and there are no painful side effects and expensive software changes across the system.

Designing a moderate size system using The Method takes about a week for a trained architect.

Business Benefits
The obvious benefit of The Method is the ability to handle changes. During initial development and certainly during
development of subsequent versions, requirements always change. Unlike designing against the required
functionality, which maximizes the cost of the change (the change is spread all over the functionalities), volatility-
based design minimizes the cost of handling the changes. You have contained the changes within components and
are able to respond quickly to changes in the business landscape. That is the essence of agility that all businesses
crave and all functionality-based designs always fail to deliver.

Structure and Communication

Most software systems share common areas of volatility. Furthermore, there are typical interactions, constraints, and
run-time relationships between these common areas of volatility. By recognizing these common areas of volatility,
the architect can produce the correct system architecture quickly, efficiently, and effectively. The Method provides
classification for the areas of volatility and guidelines for the interactions between these areas. Having clear,
consistent structure for components in the architecture and their relationship is not just a good starting point, but is
essential for communication and ramp up time of developers, as well as speeding and smoothing the team’s work
along the project.

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Project Design Approach

Most teams and projects have no clear idea upfront of the duration and cost of the project, or the risk involved.
Therefore, decision makers are often flying blind. The only way to try and compensate is with wasteful and expensive
overcapacity staffing and bloated estimations, which often makes matters worse.

With project design, The Method prescribes how to build the project as a network of development-related activities,
and how to find the duration of the project. The Method instructs how to assign resources against the project network,
and how to calculate the cost of the project. From the available time between activities in the network The Method
also calculates the risk of the project using The Method’s risk models.

Note that there is no single way of building any system. Projects designed to meet an aggressive schedule will cost
more, be far riskier and more complex than projects designed to reduce cost and minimize risk. Project design
narrows this spectrum of possibilities to several good project design options, such as the least expensive way to build
the system, the fastest way to deliver the system, the safest way of meeting the commitments, and even the best
combination of schedule, cost, and risk.

Since even a simple project can have several possible options that trade time, cost, and risk, The Method shows how
to model these options and how to narrow it down to several good viable options for managers to choose from.
Project design also sets up the project for simple project management and tracking.

Table 1 shows an example of the kind of options that project design can provide (from Righting Software, pp 360).

Design Option Duration Total Cost Risk

(months) (man-months)
Activity Driven 8 61 0.74
Architecture Driven 9 68 0.38
Understaffed 12 80 0.47

Table 1. Sample project design options.

Designing a decent size project using The Method takes about a week for a trained architect.

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About Detailed Design

System architecture, as high-level design, is very different from detailed design. Detailed design focuses on the
individual parts of a system, rather than the whole system. Detailed design is concerned with designing the structure
of software code within each component and designing the interfaces that components use to interact (communicate)
with each other. Detailed design is time consuming compared with architecture, and is not part of the design artifacts
The Method produces.

It is important to note that just because The Method invests in a fast, up-front critical system and project design, does
not imply it is like the Waterfall style of development with a “big upfront design”. Waterfall typically takes months to
design everything to a minute level of detail before development can ever start. The Method’s design is not “big”.
Rather, while it is broad in scope, it is terse, yet good-enough to drive educated decisions up front, and a consistent,
efficient design and development of the components later on. The details of the components such as the UX, UI,
reports, data contracts, internal software design of each component, etc., are part of the development phase of the
project, not its architecture. This sensible approach is very similar to the distinction between the architecture of a
house from its specific details such as the structure of the walls, the furniture, and the paint.

Separating the work of system design from that of detailed design produces the following benefits:

1) To enable educated decisions, management only needs the output of project design (the options, such as
Table 1), which in turn requires the architecture, but not the detailed design. Consequently, there is no need
to invest in expensive detailed design in order to make these key educated decisions at the beginning of the
project.
2) The team will perform the detailed design on the go during development, against the architecture, just when
the details are needed. This allows keeping the team small, and the system within the confines of the
architecture.
3) Given the right team composition (enough senior developers capable of detailed design), the project design
can ignore detailed design since it is part of the development of every component.

Design Process vs. Development Process

By combining system and project design, The Method is a design process. As a design process The Method is
independent of development processes such as Agile. This enables The Method to be used across any number of
different specific development processes.

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Business Value
Table 2 lists the range of business value The Method creates compared with previous generation system design
techniques.

Business Value Previous Techniques The Method

System Project System Project
Design Design Design Design
Maybe, Maybe
System high level design, sooner or later Not supported Sooner Sooner
not
Unintended side effects Yes Not supported No No
Reduced time-to-market No Not supported Yes Yes
Reduced total-cost-of-ownership No Not supported Yes Yes
Ability to measure and manage risk No Not supported Yes Yes
An agile, low technical debt software code base that
supports implementing requirements changes much No Not supported Yes Yes
faster
Reduced waste No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased number and strength of competitive advantages
No Not supported Yes Yes
to gain market share
Potential asymmetric competitive advantages No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased probability of a successful project No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased quality No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased ROI No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased effective decision making No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased confidence in design methods used No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased confidence in development methods used No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased culture of effectiveness and success No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased team satisfaction and retention rate No Not supported Yes Yes
Increased innovation rate Maybe at first Not supported Yes Yes

Table 2. Comparing the business value of The Method with previous generation design approaches.

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The Story Behind The Method

The Method was developed by Juval Löwy, founder of IDesign, and is a proven design process, rather than a new,
idealistic approach. There is no manifesto or need to believe, and its track record speaks for itself. Löwy has trained
thousands of practicing software architects the world over in the principles underlying The Method and how to use it.

Over the past 20 years Löwy and IDesign have successfully used The Method to design hundreds of systems for
organizations of every type all over the world. Through this effort, IDesign has gained vast exposure to, and
experience and understanding of, real world lasting system architectures. Indeed, there are few that have such
breadth and depth of experience in real world system design and project design as IDesign.

The December 2019 publication of Juval Löwy’s book Righting Software, describing The Method, its principles and how
to use it, opens The Method to the general public.

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Resources
1. Righting Software, 1st Edition

By Juval Löwy, Addison-Wesley Professional, December 2019

2. The Architect’s Master Class

The Architect’s Master Class is the ultimate resource for the professional architect. The class shows how to take
an active leadership role and is often referred to as a career-changing event. Alumni of the class are the architects
of some of the most well-known companies and projects around the world. While the class shows how to design
modern systems, it sets the focus on the ‘why’ and the rationale behind particular design decisions, often shedding
light on poorly understood aspects. You will see relevant design guidelines, best practices, pitfalls, and the crucial
process required of today’s modern architects. Don’t miss on this unique opportunity to learn and improve your
design skills with IDesign, and share our passion for architecture and software engineering.

3. The Project Design Master Class

The Project Design Master Class presents our structured approach to project design and a comprehensive set of
matching tools and techniques. You will master the steps, the interactions, the dynamics, the accurate modeling,
the complexity reductions, the metrics, the rationale behind the intuition and experience. You will see how to
perfect communication with top management, restore trust, and greatly increase your chance of success. The
class provides guidance and knowledge that would otherwise take decades and many projects to acquire, and
will propel your career like nothing else ever will.

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