Upon those who step into the same rivers flow other and yet other waters.

All things . . . are in flux like a river.

Trans. John Mansley Robinson, An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1968) p. 91, Fragment 5.15 and p. 89, Fragment 5.10.

In my estimation, embracing change has revolutionized our conception of software architecture.  With the advent of agile methodologies, we are consistently designing for change.  Moreover, my team develops core functionality, deploys and welcomes change requests.

The question then becomes how does one code for change?  Some of today’s biggest buzz words can give a clue: Test Driven Development (TDD), Domain Driven Design (DDD), Inversion of Control (IOC) and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

Test Driven Development, used correctly, can mitigate bugs during the implementation of change sets.  Furthermore, DDD specifies a guide to use design patterns to implement loosely couple objects.  In the same vein Inversion of Control, as shown in earlier posts, greatly reduces dependencies between objects.  Finally, Service Oriented Architecture defines architecture to house loosely coupled systems.

In summation, we should embrace change throughout our design, implementation, deployment and changes set resolution.