Top 3 Software Architecture and Design Trends in 2021

Last Updated on 2025-03-02

Changes are inevitable in the tech world. But, what are the new trends in software architecture and design? Learn to distinguish the differences between software architecture and design and know more about their latest trends in 2021.

A software development team involves a group of engineers with different levels of expertise. But, not everyone knows that software architecture and design are different processes. Why do we need to distinguish the difference?

Software architects provide the groundwork for a software system. Also, this involves decisions on software design. The more complex the software system is, the more they need to develop a well-thought-out software design. 

Similar to building architects, software architects help layout the proper foundation for the software infrastructure. Additionally, they guide the software team throughout the project. Hence, designing the entire software infrastructure will affect future decisions in the development phase. Let’s take a look at the differences between software architecture and design.

What is Software Architecture? 

The design decisions of a software program are made in this phase. There will inevitably be changes in team decisions along the way. Software architecture focuses on technical requirements like scalability, security, flexibility, or reusability. This includes specific tasks that design teams need to execute.

Of course, your software architects provide the blueprint used to communicate and to encourage collaboration between teams. It is then your front-end and back-end developers’ responsibility to write the architectural framework into code. Consequently, it is necessary to include optimization in this early phase.

Let’s take a look at one research from Carnegie Mellon University. Software architecture is a system representing the design decisions related to overall system structure and behavior.

This means that architecture helps stakeholders understand and analyze how the system will achieve essential qualities like modifiability, availability, and security. In fact, here are some of the indicators of good software architecture:

• The software program is user-friendly and provides a good user experience.
• It can scale and support growth.
• The software delivers high performance.
• Developers can easily modify and add new functions as needed
• Easy to maintain
• High-reliability score

Software Design Facts

Development teams need a reference point. In that case, your software team will need a blueprint. More importantly, Software design is about the elements that make up a system. With a design plan, you have the blueprint to guide software teams to implement coding tasks, design, integrations, and quality testing.

During the implementation stage, there will be an overlap between processes. You don’t always have to treat them separately. Furthermore, you have to remember that they are two parts to a process.

The architecture includes design in the planning phase. However, design is not architectural in its sense. Sometimes we might need to look at the design and see how it will help realize the set architectural plan.

Now that we know the differences, let’s look at software architecture and design trends.

Latest Trends in Software Architecture and Design in 2021

With more companies going remote, software architects and designers are looking for ways to communicate with teams and do away with old technologies. Additionally, they are actively looking for ways to improve available technologies. Here are components in software architecture and design that are worth noting in 2021.

Software architecture and design is built to be resilient

Firstly, software architects make sure that all components communicate with each other efficiently. Secondly, they make sure that the software program functions with little to no failure. It is crucial for software systems to be resilient where if one component fails, it won’t make the other components unavailable.

Finally, software architects make sure that all requirements are met. Furthermore, there is an increase in the adoption of asynchronous programming and event-driven architecture design.

Choosing between monoliths and microservices

Architects are now relying on well-established patterns, including designs. They are now shifting their focus to high cohesion and very low coupling. It has become easier to build out distributed systems and microservices to solve all problems. Modular monoliths, known as distributed systems, come back to all fundamental principles in software architecture.

There are currently two ways to develop distributed systems available. For example, the Dapr and Open Application Model developed by Microsoft continue to make progressions in building distributed systems.

Overlap in Software and Data architecture

Nowadays, building distributed data meshes are gaining more traction. For example, centralized data will work on a small scale. While a distributed data mesh works best if you work with a large amount of data sources. 

The traditional architectural framework of data warehouses makes it inefficient and difficult to scale. Data mesh uses data gateways that are similar to API gateways. They shift their focus to the data aspect. With teams gaining ownership over data, the data warehouse and data lake will only a small part of the mesh

Trends in Software Architecture, is it moving as fast as Software Development?

Software architecture and design are sometimes thought of as the same. Indeed, these are two separate processes that function together to create the software program. Software architects dictate the functionality of a software program which involves decisions in software design. Then, the groundwork is laid out for design teams to create.

In the early phases of software development, the architects create technical requirements that include data security, scalability, flexibility, or reusability. Overlap between these two processes is inevitable. It is the software architect’s responsibility to create a good architectural framework and design to keep everyone on track. To conclude, the software architect’s role is essential to complete all the requirements needed in the project.

The movement in software architecture and design does not change as quickly as other processes in IT. Software architects hold key principles that not only apply to software development. In addition, software architects and designers work together towards a vision.

Having a set of principles will help them collaborate more effectively. Currently, building distributed systems and distributed data meshes are new architectural concepts that are yet to gain popularity.

With all the movements in IT, we at Full Scale are on top of it all. We make sure that our developers get the proper up-to-date training to keep up with the trends in the tech market. Work with committed developers on your software program projects today!

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