Architecture life cycle

Working under architecture means that solutions are designed, implemented and deployed according to an underlying architecture.

During the design of a system, architects make architectural decisions. Architectural decisions are those design decisions that are the hardest to change later on and have large impact on the project as a whole. Which decisions are exactly architecturally relevant is not easy to define and is highly dependent on the type of system designed. Design decisions that do not influence the architecture of the system are not considered architecturally relevant and can be made by the designers and developers of the system.

During projects the architect must govern that the architectural decisions are respected and not violated by the designers, developers, implementers, testers, or other stakeholders.

After the project is delivered the architecture must be guarded during the full life cycle of the delivered system to ensure the architecture is not compromised when changes are performed to the system. For instance a perfectly architected high available solution could undergo a change in some network equipment after a few years of operation that eliminates the high availability of the system by introducing a Single Point Of Failure (SPOF). The system managers performing the change might not be aware of the introduction of the SPOF, but the architect guarding all changes to the system should be aware of architecture threatening changes. It is therefore of great value to have the architecture governed during the full life cycle of a system; from creation of the first design elements to the day the system is decommissioned.

This entry was posted on Sunday 25 May 2014