Coupling Decreases Latency

Problem: The process is not responsive enough; development intervals are too long; market windows are not met.

Context:

A service process and, perhaps in special cases, a small design/implementation process using an iterative or incremental approach.

Forces:

Stages should be independent to reduce coupling and promote independence.

Independence improves opportunities for parallelism.

Independence hampers information flow.

Solution:

Open communication paths between roles to increase the overall coupling/role ratio, particularly between central process roles. Communication between roles can be shaped using patterns such as Work Flows Inward and Move Responsibilities.

Resulting Context:

Coupling of course increases dependence between roles, which may not always be a good thing.

This pattern is somehow related to Interrupts Unjam Blocking.

Handoffs can increase latency. The number of "hops" between roles should be kept small for any given problem.

Design Rationale:

Basic software engineering principle.

Next: Prototype