How to Create an Architecture Overview
Gerrit Müller · 2013
A short specific overview of an architecture is a powerful means during product creation. This article addresses how to create such an overview. One of the main issues is the need for breadth, what needs to be included and for whom, and the balancing act of providing sufficient depth, what are crucial details that are part of this top-level description. Also the way of describing is discussed, from stakeholder needs to ambiguity and the level of formalism. Distribution This article or presentation is written as part of the Gaudi project. The Gaudi project philosophy is to improve by obtaining frequent feedback. Frequent feedback is pursued by an open creation process. This document is published as intermediate or nearly mature version to get feedback. Further distribution is allowed as long as the document remains complete and unchanged. March 6, 2013 status: draft version: 1.2 C ustomer Operations F unctional A pplication internal O perational view C ustomer objectives architecture overview auditors quality officers managers C onceptual R ealization production engineers service engineers purchasing managers maintainers other systems customers application experts marketing, sales software engineers hardware engineers testers Approach to Create Architecture Overview • Top-down identify stakeholders, concerns, views and models • Identify scope: product, market, system, context • Bottom-up fact finding and quantification • Iterate and communicate many times • Define overview structure and presentation • Determine most relevant issues: important, valuable, critical, costly , ... How to Create an Architecture Overview 2 Gerrit Muller version: 1.2 March 6, 2013 OHTapproach