System Design Principles
Explore essential system design principles such as modularity, scalability, fault tolerance, maintainability, and security. Understand how these guide collaborative design decisions across teams to create robust, adaptable systems. This lesson helps you apply technical foundations critical for successful program management.
We'll cover the following...
A system is a collection of components that work together to achieve a common goal. Designing a system involves making decisions about the components and their interactions to meet specific requirements. The following system design principles help ensure that a system is designed for performance, reliability, and security.
In order to successfully create a robust and efficient system, you must taken into consideration multiple system design principles. The principles we'll review in this lesson are:
Modularity
Scalability
Fault tolerance
Maintainability
Security and privacy
These principles will guide you as cross-functional groups all contribute to a solution design. For instance, a single engineering team that owns infrastructure may be focused mostly on performance and scalability, a separate engineering team may be mostly focused on a modular approach as they build in features, and the security team jumps in to advocate for a secure system.
Each contribution from cross-functional groups can be combined to create a truly great solution.
Modularity
Modularity involves breaking down complex systems into smaller, more manageable parts. By dividing a system into modules, each with a specific responsibility, it becomes easier to design, develop, test, and maintain the system. Each module should have a clear interface with other modules, allowing them to interact without unnecessary complexity. This principle helps ensure that a system is flexible and adaptable to changes.
Microservices architecture: Microservices are an architectural style that involves breaking down a large application into smaller independent services. Each service can be developed and deployed independently, making it easier to scale and maintain the system. For example, Netflix uses a microservices architecture to handle its large user base and complex business requirements.
Coupling: Tight coupling and loose coupling are two design principles that refer to the level of interdependence between different components in a system. Tight coupling can be appropriate in some cases, such as in real-time systems where performance is critical, while loose coupling is often preferred in more complex systems that require flexibility and scalability.
In a tightly coupled system, the components are highly dependent on each other, and changes to one component can have a significant impact on the others. This can make it difficult to make changes to the system without unintended consequences.
In a loosely coupled system, the components are designed to be more independent of each other, with well-defined interfaces that allow for changes to be made to one component without affecting others. This makes the system more flexible and easier to maintain over time. ...