It is in doing the work captured in the ADD that the hard work of a design has to be done. It is also in the ADD that the greatest opportunity to fudge it exists. While we deliberately omit design detail from the ADD, sometimes so as to retain portability, sometimes just to avoid clouding the big picture, we must still be convinced that our design is in fact implementable. The engineer should know of at least one acceptable way to implement each feature before calling for it and should have thought about the conceptual integrity of the collection of all the code required to implement the features.
The proposition that architectural design should not consider detailed design, we suggest is misguided. If we cannot consider implementation, we can't be very good engineers, because any fool can design the unbuildable. It is by considering the implementation that we discover the limitations of our designs and learn the difference between good and bad. We are able to see alternatives, compare them and select the best. If we cannot consider implementable reality, one design is as good as another, and this critical stage of cognition becomes a typing exercise to see how fast one can `write the document', and never mind what is written!
The ADD is a didactic document. It teaches the reader how to see the problem and solution in the way that the author sees them.
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