Systems and methods are provided that facilitate development of a module for use in a control application by assembling one or more predefined aspects onto a module bus. The module bus acts as a virtual backplane that allows module functionality in the form of predefined bus-compliant aspects to be selected and added to the bus, thereby yielding a module having a desired set of functions. When an aspect is added to the module bus, the bus integrates the aspects into the module automatically without the need to modify the module's core code to interface the aspects with the module. The module bus also establishes the necessary interdependencies between aspects representing cross-cutting concerns without requiring new code to be writing to link the aspects.