Simplifying Software Design: The Genius of Bureaucracies
summary
Alistair Cockburn applies a bureaucracy metaphor to software design, using two heuristics—"Not my job" and "No need-to-know"—to drive decomposition of responsibilities and evaluate whether objects/subsystems are well aligned. He revisits domain- and responsibility-driven design (DDD) and examines older and newer architectures—including how large language models (LLMs) respond to those heuristics—to show practical guidance for creating simpler, evolvable systems.
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