Modular Architecture for Software Development: What are the Benefits for Business
A modular architecture can help you scale your business and software while boosting your innovation and spending less money.
There are numerous benefits to technology, but if you had to name only one, you could say that it gives you a clean way to do more while saving time and money. That’s certainly the case with software development these days.
With the crazy competition in the market, the traditional techniques simply don’t work for big projects because they are simply too general and macro to handle the subtle complications that can ruin the entire work.
Rather than trying to find a needle in a haystack, many developers use modular architecture in software engineering to save both time and money. But, how does it work? Let’s find out.
What is Software Architecture? And Why Does it Matter?
A software system’s architecture serves as its basis. The quality of the structure is greatly influenced by it. As a result, it has a crucial role to play in the system’s effective growth and long-term upkeep. Some of the early decisions are made while developing the architecture, and these are significant since they influence subsequent ones.
Even software platforms without a formal blueprint or architecture documentation have an architecture. The need for a carefully considered architecture increases with the size and complexity of a software system. When implemented correctly, software architecture offers a wide range of perks that significantly boost your system’s chances for success.
What is Modular Architecture?
A modular architecture is all that it seems like it would be: a method to break up a problem’s complexities into smaller, more manageable parts. The key distinction is that it contains some rules, concepts, and patterns as a type of software architecture.
It is clear; one module includes all of the software’s features, not simply the code. Agile development is a major benefit of modular architecture and it is The first step in controlling software complexity. Modules carry out specialized tasks that typically need the capabilities of other modules to complete the desired business process. Since dependencies can’t be circular, one module relies on several other ones.
How do you know if a modular architecture is a good solution for your software?
As your business expands, you’ll want to upgrade and tweak the software to be smooth. Beginning with a modular architecture can help you control software maintenance and scalability while prioritizing the end user and the business’s technical resources.
The architecture used in conventional software development is monolithic, having a single, undivided monolithic unit that lacks modularity. The same massive codebase must be accessed by developers who wish to modify the program or work on other features, changing the entire stack at once. Your finest engineers will have to take on unnecessary work, forcing you to waste time and money.
Modular architectures, on the other hand, let you divide your program up into smaller parts, leading to functional autonomy while allowing for change. In this case, it would not be necessary to write a lot of code in order to combine all modules in several ways to accomplish diverse tasks.
What types of businesses use modular architecture?
While we’re discussing modular architecture in the tech sector, particularly software development, you have to know that the application of modular architecture goes beyond that.
Automotive, IT, solar energy, transportation, and even telecom are a handful of industries that use modular organization. For instance, without a modular structure, it is difficult to put together a solar cube from existing solar components, change a truck’s engine with ease, or reconfigure a modular structure into another layout after a while.
The modular design has gained popularity not just for trade fair exhibitions but also for retail advertising displays. These personalized advertising displays require innovative designs, but they also require a temporary framework that can be reused. As a result, a lot of businesses are switching to modular exhibit design.
How does modular architecture help to optimize business processes?
Now, you know what modular-based software architecture is and how it applies to a wide range of industries. But, there’s a more important question. Why does your approach have to be modular in software engineering? There are several reasons.
| Benefit | Description |
| Scalability | While the business expands and new demands show up managing the software gets challenging. The number of developers is rising. The new feature may have an impact in many other areas, and occasionally one developer may choose to block another. To solve this problem, the modular architecture can divide the project into manageable components and allocate a team of programmers to each module. By doing so, each programmer will only be in charge of a select few modules rather than the entire project. |
| Assigning resources & privileges | The project becomes independently manageable. Each programmer has access to enough resources and tests and can work on their individual modules. This is crucial for raising developer performance. By specifying authority, you can decide which programmer can access which module. |
| Spending less time and money on debugging | It might be difficult to determine how and when errors arise in huge applications while debugging them. It can take a coder a lot of precious time to go through endless lines of code to identify a bug and the issues it creates later on in the software. But if the software is built with modularity in mind, each separate job will have a discrete chunk of code. The coder can keep track of less code since they know where to search for issues in a certain function. |
| Simple, understandable code | Modular architecture divides the code into different functions that separately relate to a single part of the total operation, making your code typically easier to understand. It may also greatly reduce the size and complexity of your files versus monolithic code. |
| Code reuse | You’ll usually have to utilize the same code or function several times. Because of modularity, you can access a piece of code from any other module or library without having to copy and paste it. |
The common factor among all of these advantages is that they all improve efficiency and save a lot of money and time. When a project is managed by a single vendor, risks are reduced and deadlines are met; there’s less risk for unexpected variable expenses; and you’ll have proficient teams to build systems that won’t waste your budget with trial and error or costly failures.
How can the use of modular architecture in software increase company revenue?
If you want to stack the cash higher and higher, there are really two ways you can do it: Get more sales and reduce your costs. These three factors are in service of that:
Seamlessly upgrading your software quality
Software systems are designed to develop and constantly add new features, much like companies are. In a perfect world, this should be considered while creating software systems or goods. You want to add more functionality to your software without making it too complicated or incompatible with other systems. A modular application does that for you.
Saving money & time on development
When businesses decide whether to launch a software system, the cost of development is a key consideration. Future growth will be simpler if modular architecture is correctly used throughout the design. When compared to non-modular designs, it will significantly shorten the time required for feature development. This will eventually lead to a cost decrease while maintaining a higher level of software quality.
Competitive advantage
Nowadays, it’s common practice to develop programs while keeping an eye out for related market items. You can discover a software product that they like, identify potential problems or other use cases, add innovative features to it, and then roll it to the market. That’ll give you a significant edge over the competitors and present your software as the solution to an existing need. That is what customers want.
What are the main myths and risks for businesses when using modular software architecture?
Here, you can see some common misconceptions about modular-based software architecture. Most of these mistakes are usually due to a lack of attention to context. Let’s see what they are:
You can reuse code anytime, anywhere
Sometimes we need to have one feature in several modules. It’s easy to place that code into a separate module. However, doing so carelessly might add unwanted dependency and make adjustments more difficult.
You need to consider whether the duplicated sections will constantly change at exactly the same time. Reusing code may be a smart move if the answer is yes. However, if the code may be different at another time, it’s OK to use the same code in a different place.
Lack of consideration for boundaries
The main goal of modular architecture is to make it simple to modify software while staying within established limits. Making adjustments, however, might be difficult if the limits of the modules you make don’t correspond with the inherent boundaries of your application.
Modular application development is always better than a monolithic approach
Not true. In fact, a monolithic architecture is quite useful in small infrastructures with limited resources such as CPU power, budget, or the number of expert coders available to do the job. You can understand the whole thing in one simple piece.
How to test modular architecture in software development?
When using modular decomposition in software engineering, you are bound to face some challenges in every module. The key is to identify and resolve these issues, not avoid them. How? You can take any modular programming example through this testing process in six stages:
#1. You must clearly identify the interfaces and contracts to prevent confusion, avoid inconsistencies, and facilitate integration testing.
#2. Use tools like Mockito to recognize and mock any dependency by simulating their behavior and relationships.
#3. Leverage automated and manual strategies to confirm the health and reliability of every module. You can use different approaches like unit testing and acceptance testing to examine various aspects.
#4. Integrate different modularity principles like high cohesion, abstraction, and inheritance to your system design and performance. By doing so, you can boost the reusability and maintainability of the entire thing.
#5. Utilize error codes, logging, circuit breakers, and other tactics to manage errors and prevent them from turning into bigger problems that hurt the entire system.
#6. Finally, you need some refactoring and optimization through profilers or code analyzers to boost code performance without changing its function.
What experience does TRIARE have with modular architecture?
Our team has taken over many software engineering projects based on different architectures. They are all equipped to rotate between tasks. Of course, we’ve found that it’s hard to define boundaries on monolithic designs.
On the other hand, after working on tens of modular software development projects, we’ve come to realize that in a modular architecture, we can follow a unified approach to get more from fewer lines of code. In addition, since everyone is clear on their responsibilities, there’s less stress and more performance.
Conclusion
As you can see, you can gain a lot from modular decomposition in software engineering. Of course, that can only happen if you have the experience to identify the best strategies and practices and possess the resources to implement them successfully.
For most businesses, it’s much easier to live that to a reliable service provider that can develop the right modular software for their specific needs and goals. We at TRIARE have a long track record of building modular software for clients to help them scale and minimize their expenses at the same time. We can do the same for you. You just need to get in touch.
