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Essay 16 - Three Rules of Deferred Decision-Making
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:date: 2005-09-21 10:10:59
:category: `War Stories and Advice <index.html>`_

This is what I remind myself to do on a daily
basis.  It forces me to be problem-focused, not technology focused.  It also
enforces the design principle of "deferred decision-making".

-   Isolate design decisions (via proper
    allocation of responsibility) so that the final, final decision can be made as
    late in the development process as possible.

-   Create an architecture that allows
    designers the freedom to tackle as many issues as possible as part of detailed
    design.

-   Create a detailed design that makes as
    many questions as possible into simple programming choices.

-   Make programming choices reconfigurable
    with minimal rework.

-   Implement reconfiguration through
    run-time parameters: the final decisions are now the user's to
    make.