📢 Introducing Goal-Oriented Architecture
By: Masoud Bahrami, from my upcoming book Language-Driven Design

We’ve been organizing software around layers, services, and controllers for decades.

Clean Architecture, Layered, Vertical Slicing… each gives us a way to structure HOW code is written. In all cases the organization is around(mostly): how we build it!

🤔 But what if we started with why the code exists❓

That's the core of Goal-Oriented Architecture. Instead of just focusing on structure, we make the Goal the primary building block.
It becomes a first-class citizen in your architecture.

⚽A Goal is a concrete, high-level outcome your system must achieve, explicitly modeled right in your architecture.

🙋‍♂️What is Goal-Oriented Architecture about:

It isn't just about organizing code; it's about organizing intention.
It's about making your architecture a direct reflection of your business objectives, leading to clearer designs.

💸Example: TransferFunds

Imagine a TransferFunds Goal: it captures everything, preconditions, the transfer itself, and all side-effects like updating balances or sending notifications, all in one clear place. No more scattered logic!

This Goal declares:

🟥 Preconditions:

➡️ Both accounts are active
➡️ Sender has enough balance
➡️ Transfer limit isn’t exceeded

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🟩 Goal:

➡️ Transfer funds between accounts

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🟨 Side-effects:

➡️ Update both balances
➡️ Log the transaction
➡️ Send notifications
➡️ Emit a FundsTransferred event

Everything related to this intent is captured in one place, the Goal, not scattered across services, handlers, and layers.

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🎯 The Benefits

✅ Brings business purpose to the center of your design
✅ Makes code easier to reason about, test, and trace
✅ Treats side-effects as part of the architecture, not an afterthought
✅ Encourages composable, declarative, intention-driven code
✅ Fits naturally in event-driven, DDD, and workflow-based systems

Goal-Oriented Architecture brings business purpose to the forefront, making your code easier to reason about, test, and trace.

📝 Stay tuned
Goal Oriented Architecture is a key part of my upcoming book: Language-Driven Design, A practical philosophy for designing systems that reflect how we think, speak, and solve problems. I'll talk more about it...