Object Oriented Design Principles for Organisation Structure & Design

While we use object-oriented design principles and patterns for architecture and design of software projects, I realized some of these patterns and principles can be very effectively used for building organization structure. To summarize, key object-oriented design principles, also referred as SOLID principles can be enlisted as follows 

1.    S- Single Responsibility Principle 

2.    O- Open Closed Principle 

3.    L- Liskov Substitution Principle

4.    I - Interface Segregation Principle

5.    D- Dependency Inversion Principle 

Currently I am working on elaborate model to describe object-oriented design principles and organization design, following are some of the key principles that can be immediately applied for organization design

1.    While building teams or user groups or functional units, every unit should have responsibility over single part of overall business activity, and it should be entirely encapsulated from other units. Two aspects of the problem are really two separate responsibilities and should therefore be in separate encapsulation unit of sub-teams, teams, departments, sub-systems, systems, business units depending on level of abstraction considered during analysis.

2.    With significantly volatile business environment, required business agility and changing business dynamics, open-closed principle makes lot of sense. Organization entities (teams, groups, process areas, departments, business units) should be closed for modification and but open for extension. We should create these structures in such a way that we don't have to change organization or unit structures every time business dynamics and customer needs change. Although we should be able to support changing needs by extending capabilities of existing structures.

3.    Substitutability is derived from behavioral sub-typing in object-oriented design. From organization design perspective, ideally people in sub-units of larger units should be able to take responsibility of larger unit over a period of time if situation demands so.

4.    Interface segregation principle statues that no client should be forced to use or depend on methods it does not use. This is directly applicable for organization design. Clients should not be forced to use processes, activities or methods that are not relevant to them as part of service delivery mechanism. True extensible organization structure is where every customer of product or service feels that whole structure is specifically created or customized for them.

5.    Dependency inversion principle is based on cohesion and coupling. One of the key software engineering metrics for quality software is cohesion and coupling. Cohesion means degree to which elements of modules belong together. Coupling means each of components make use of little or no knowledge of definitions of other components. Although there are multiple factors that need to be considered in software design, generally we strive for high cohesion and low coupling. Organization process groups, departments, business units should have high cohesion and low coupling. If two process groups, business units or departments require significant communication and interaction potentially those could be merged to create single cohesive unit. Key considerations while designing these structures is high level abstraction units should not depend on low-level units, rather both should depend on abstraction levels. Also, abstractions considered while building units should not depend on details, rather details should depend on level of abstractions.

With these considerations, we can build highly scalable and agile organization structures that provide sustainable competitive advantage for business.