This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
The company was moving smoothly, but there are some tasks that involved way too much micromanagement by the CEO. He arranged the last Christmas party with Transparent Hospitality, a hospitality company offering a range of services. But the company was not very well co-ordinated, so he found himself having to deal with several people there. One to organise the catering, one to send invites, another regarding meal requirements. He had to pass information between them as well - for instance, ask the invite-sender how many replies and then pass this on to the meal manager.
The cart was pushing the horse.
The CEO, acting as a client, was having to work according to all the particular details of organising a function and co-ordinating various people within the company. This might have been understandable if he had very unusual needs, but seemed ridiculous for a typical business fuction.
The next year, he came across a more organised outfit, Service Orientat. They provided a single person, a Facade, to handle the reuqests in the CEO's terms. The CEO could issue straightforward directives, such as "We will have a function on December 12 with 80 people in a contemporary setting". Behind the scenes, the Facade would talk to catering and everyone else, but the CEO didn't need to know about it.
The Facade presents a simple interface to the CEO oriented around the services he requires. To appreciate the benefit, there are two perspectives you can take:
From the CEO's point of view, he can concentrate on what he's good at: broad strategy rather than micromanagement of the Christmas party. Ideally, the CEO will have a Facade for every task he needs to perform - the Hospitality Manager will be joined by an Operations Manager, a Marketing Manager, and so on. They would each take orders according to how the CEO thinks, and transform those orders into low-level details.
In software, the approach is called "Service-Oriented Architecture". It ensures code regarding core business logic is not tangled up with the specifics of lower-level libraries - that is, it prevents coupling. It is easier to understand and change the code if these elements are separated from each other.
From Service Orientat's point of view, the Facade offers a simple interface to the outside world. This makes it easier for a potential client to decide if they are a good fit and reduces learning effort in using the services.
Many software modules are unfortunately more like Transparent Hospitality than Service Orientat. The client is confronted with perhaps 20 classes, and no idea how to use them. That's fine if you want to achieve maximum flexibility. But usually there are only a handful of typical tasks which the developer really needs. The Facade object makes it clear what the developer can do with the module and provides an "one-stop shop" for using it.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.