Fundamentals of Software Architecture

Chapter 5. Identifying Architectural Characteristics

Identifying the driving architectural characteristics is one of the first steps in creating an architecture or determining the validity of an existing architecture. Identifying the correct architectural characteristics (“-ilities”) for a given problem or application requires an architect to not only understand the domain problem, but also collaborate with the problem domain stakeholders to determine what is truly important from a domain perspective.

An architect uncovers architecture characteristics in at least three ways by extracting from domain concerns, requirements, and implicit domain knowledge. We previously discussed implicit characteristics and we cover the other two here.

Extracting Architecture Characteristics from Domain Concerns

An architect must be able to translate domain concerns to identify the right architectural characteristics. For example, is scalability the most important concern, or is it fault tolerance, security, or performance? Perhaps the system requires all four characteristics combined. Understanding the key domain goals and domain situation allows an architect to translate those domain concerns to “-ilities,” which then forms the basis for correct and justifiable architecture decisions.

One tip when collaborating with domain stakeholders to define the driving architecture characteristics is to work hard to keep the final list as short as possible. A common anti-pattern in architecture entails trying ...