We encountered a performance problem based on a design flaw that prevented the client from processing messages in parallel. Applying patterns greatly reduced the problem but did not completely fix it, because the real problem was the client becoming a bottleneck. This couldn’t be fixed with a thousand patterns. We later addressed this problem by refactoring the message flow architecture to route messages directly from the pricing gateway to the contribution gateway. So, patterns can help design and maintain a system, but they don’t necessarily make up for poor upfront design.
