Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Software Architecture and Requirement Management…

… should be close friends that like to communicate and interact. Why? Software Architecture is the main and first interface between the requirements coming from different stakeholders and the development team. Based on the requirements, the “Architecture Specification” will be developed. Requirements are fetched from very different sources, depending on the domain. The subsequent bullets list just some of them, clustered as Functional (FR) and Non-Functional Requirements (NFR):
- Customers (FR)
- Existing Platforms, Mainline (FR), (NFR)
- General Market Requirements (NFR)
- Standards and Regulations (FR)
- Best Practice and Patterns (NFR)
- Quality Attributes, preferably prioritized, utility trees are recommended (NFR)
As a result, the “Architecture Specification” should reflect all requirements as well as their importance and emphasis in the project. Any mismatch (or even missing requirement) can be detected in the scope of a review or even a architecture test. This is good news because it avoids very expensive changes in later steps of the software development process.

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