We believe that a certain amount of up-front planning and design is not only important, but inevitable. No one really goes into any project blindly. The groundwork must be laid, the infrastructure must be decided upon, tools must be selected, and a general direction must be set. A focus on a shared architectural vision and strategy should be established early. Unbridled, change can undermine structure.
Orderly change can enhance it.
Change can engender malignant sprawl, or healthy, orderly growth. A broad consensus that objects emerge from an iterative incremental evolutionary process has formed in the object-oriented community over the last decade. Both patterns emphasize acute, local concerns at the expense of chronic, architectural ones. It is through such a process that local and global forces are reconciled over time. Only then can the environment be balanced both as a whole, and in its parts, at every moment in its history.