The need for a robust system architecture to support software development is well known. In enterprise software development, this must be realized in a multi-tier environment for deployment to a software framework. Many popular integrated development environment (IDE) tools for component-based frameworks push multi-tier partitioning by assisting developers with convenient code generation tools and software deployment tools which package the code. However, if components are not packaged wisely, modifying and adding components becomes difficult and expensive. To help manage change, vertical partitioning can be applied to compartmentalize components according to function and role, resulting in a grid partitioning. This thesis is to advocate a design methodology that enforces vertical partitioning on top of the horizontal multitier partitioning, and to provide guidelines that document the grid partitioning realization in enterprise software development processes as applied in the J2EE framework.