Anti-patterns seem to be going a bit out of vogue these days. I like them as a way of capturing our occasional follies. I will periodically record some of them here starting with Architecture by e-mail.
Anti-Pattern Name: Architecture by e-mail
General Form:
Large numbers of e-mails with long chains attached are sent between architects and designers which encompass important architectural decisions.
Symptoms and Consequences:
- People spend a lot of time on e-mail rather than focussing on work products or deliverables.
- Important information communicated via e-mail is lost or ends up being stored on individuals workstations.
Refactored Solution:
- Capture important decisions in the right place (e.g. an Architectural Decisions work product and use this as the vehicle for discussing options.
- Use meetings or conference calls to discuss options and drive out decisions.
Software Architecture Zen 
Email is great way to communicate architecture decisions, not for discuss options and drive out decisions. I think this anti-pattern isn't well-rounded or maybe its name isn't right…
People always need to “spend” time to understand some decisions, by email or meeting.
Your blog is great! Cheers!
Hi, I agree e-mail is one way to discuss the options around architecture decisions but it is not the place to permanently capture them. For that a more permanent and central repository is needed. The problem is that e-mail has no “closure”. People cannot be sure what the consensus is or what was finally agreed.
[…] as documents. This is variant (generalisation) of one of my favourite [sic] anti-patterns. e-mails are one of the greatest sources of unstructured data in the world today. There must be, […]
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