Industrial experience with design patterns

A design pattern is a particular prose form of record-ing design information such that designs which have worked well in the past can be applied again in similar situations in the future. The availability of a collec-tion of design patterns can help both the experienced and the novice designer recognize situations in which design reuse could or should occur. We have found that design patterns: 1) provide an eflective “shorthand ” for communicating complex con-cepts effectively between designers, 2) can be used to record and encourage the reuse of “best practices”, 3) capture the essential parts of a design in compact form, e.g. for documentation of existing software architec-tures. Since the patterns community is one that shares in-formation in an open forum and builds on the experi-ences of others, we chose to submit a joint paper on our industrial experiences with patterns. We focus on the lessons learned in our respective industrial settings as a jirst step towards answering the questions ‘patt-erns sound very promising, but how are they actually used m the industry and what benefits, if any, do they bring in practice?“ We proceed by briefly describing each of our respec-tive experiences with patterns. This is followed by a joint “lessons learned ” section and conclusion