Kent looking up & smiling wearing a blue fedora & a bow tie. Photo credit: Robert Opiyo Kent playing his then-new Dontcho Ivanov guitar. Kent on Pier 47 in San Francisco looking pensive. Photo credit Robert Opiyo Kent looking directly at the camera in a white straw hat & blue plaid shirt. Photo credit: Kunal Bhalla Kent looking over his shoulder in a blue denim shirt, one eyebrow raised. Photo credit: Mohini Ufelli

Software Design

Make it run, make it right, make it fast - Douglas Beck, my Pappy

Why care about software design? Software creates value two ways:

  • Today's future cash flows
  • Optionality for new cash flows

Software design creates optionality.

Twenty five years into my career, in 2005, I was invited to sit on a panel with Ed Yourdon & Larry Constantine, authors of Structured Design, the book that introduced the terms "coupling" & "cohesion". Digging into the book in preparation, I realized that these pioneers had long ago laid out the equivalent of Newton's Laws of Motion for software design.

Eighteen years later I finally published Tidy First? A Personal Exercise in Empirical Design, the first book in a series on Empirical Software Design, bringing those concepts to a new audience. This year I published The Good News Factory, an executive briefing on software design aka "why the CFO should care". I'm currently working on the third book in the series, Tidy Together, about teams practicing software design together as they continue to develop features.

My newsletter, Tidy First, gives paying subscribers instant access to chapters as I draft them.