For all you OOD experts. What would be the recommended way to model the following scenario? I have a certain class hierarchy similar to the following one: class Base { ... } class Derived1 : Base { ... } class Derived2 : Base { ... } ... Next, I would like to implement different compression/decompression engines for this hierarchy. (I already have code for several strategies that best handle different cases, like file compression, network stream compression, legacy system compression, etc.) I would like the compression strategy to be pluggable and chosen at runtime, however I'm not sure how to handle the class hierarchy. Currently I have a tighly-coupled design that looks like this: interface ICompressor { byte[] Compress(Base instance); } class Strategy1Compressor : ICompressor { byte[] Compress(Base instance) { // Common compression guts for Base class ... // if( instance is Derived1 ) { // Compression guts for Derived1 class } if( instance is Derived2 ) { // Compression guts for Derived2 class } // Additional compression logic to handle other class derivations ... } } As it is, whenever I add a new derived class inheriting from Base, I would have to modify all compression strategies to take into account this new class. Is there a design pattern that allows me to decouple this, and allow me to easily introduce more classes to the Base hierarchy and/or additional compression strategies?