Monorepository-Driven Design of Information Systems and Software Complexes

Abstract

Large-scale information systems (IS) and software complexes increasingly integrate heterogeneous services, interfaces and data pipelines, yet fragmented repositories and brittle cross-team processes often constrain their evolution. This paper presents a monorepository-driven approach to the design of IS and software complexes, treating the repository, the build system, and the release process as a unified socio-technical architecture. We formulate the design problem, derive a set of architectural and organisational constraints first principles and prior art, and synthesise a method that aligns dependency governance, hermetic builds and continuous delivery with cross-team change management. The contribution is a design framework with actionable rules for repository topology, dependency semantics and CI orchestration, accompanied by an evaluation protocol and quality indicators suitable for pilots in institutional environments. While our focus is architectural, we outline how the approach yields measurable improvements in build determinism, change-coupling visibility and time-to-integration, and we discuss threats to validity and portability to polyglot toolchains.