Fred Brooks Design Quotations

Mediocre design provably wastes the world's resources, corrupts the environment, affects international competitiveness. Design is important.

Conceptual integrity is the most important consideration in system design.

A little retrospection shows that although many fine, useful software systems have been designed by committees and built as part of multipart projects, those software systems that have excited passionate fans are those that are the products of one or a few designing minds, great designers.

The term architecture is used here to describe the attributes of a system as seen by the programmer, i.e., the conceptual structure and functional behavior, as distinct from the organization of the data flow and controls, the logical design, and the physical implementation. i. Additional details concerning the architecture

Design work doesn't just satisfy requirements, it elicits them.

Improving your process won't move you from good to great design. It'll move you from bad to average.

Software and hardware design is less different than software designers think, but more different than hardware designers think.

A design style is defined by a set of microdecisions. A clear style reflects a consistent set. A clear style may not be a good style; a muddled one never is.

The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking concepts: [...] I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation.

Predictability and great design are not friends.

Consensus processes starve innovative design by eating the resource.