Big Ball of Mud

Kind: anti-pattern

Layer: Enforcement Core

Record: architecture:big-ball-of-mud

Severity: discouraged

Scope: modularity, state_transaction

Formed by: Allow boundaries to remain implicit, permit unrestricted dependencies, mix concerns freely, share mutable state broadly, and accumulate changes without architectural segmentation.

Canonical: Ontology

A defect in which a system has no discernible boundaries, so any part can depend on and change any other.

Listed in Architecture principles, before God Object.

Contracts

• <Architecture Anti-Pattern>

Refactored by

• Define Module Boundaries
• Split Module
• Architecture Test
• Assign Owner
• Fitness Functions

Severity

• discouraged

Category

• Anti-patterns

Force

• Modularity
• State transaction

Negated by

• Modularity
• Component-Based Architecture
• Monolith Architecture

Violates

• Monolith Architecture

Linked from

• Principles are typed
• Anti-patterns
• Core Modular Design
• Codebase / System Architecture Styles
• Architecture Review Evolution Governance
• Core Modular Design
• Anti-patterns
• Severity levels
• The forces