A company decides to solve a particular problem using software, so it gathers a list of requirements for that system. A wide variety of techniques exist for the exercise of requirements gathering, generally defined by the software development process used by the team. But the architect must consider many other factors in designing a software solution, as illustrated in Figure 4-1.
Figure 4-1. A software solution consists of both domain requirements and architectural characteristics
Architects may collaborate on defining the domain or business requirements, but one key responsibility entails defining, discovering, and otherwise analyzing all the things the software must do that isn’t directly related to the domain functionality: architectural characteristics.
What distinguishes software architecture from coding and design? Many things, including the role that architects have in defining architectural characteristics, the important aspects of the system independent of the problem domain. Many organizations describe these features of software with a variety of terms, including nonfunctional requirements, but we dislike that term because it is self-denigrating. Architects created that term to distinguish architecture characteristics from functional requirements, but naming something nonfunctional has a negative impact from a language ...
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