Model-based Systems Architecting

7Deciding How the System Shall be Formed: Constructional Architecture

7.1. Understanding how the system is formed?

Constructional architecture, or equivalently constructional analysis, intends to precisely describe the different components of a system, as well as all their relative interactions¹. The core motivation of constructional architecture is to concretely understand and specify in detail the system, in terms of structure – that is, in other terms, to understand how the system is formed – and not of behaviors, that is, in its constructional nature … as we would have naturally guessed!

Constructional architecture is key since it consolidates all architectural analyses into a concrete vision of the considered system. It makes in particular the synthesis between a top-down design approach, as provided by the systems architecting process, and a bottom-up one, which is typically induced by the constraints due to an existing product architecture or by the new possibilities brought by the advances of technology. The entire idea of constructional architecture is thus to find the best possible balance between these two apparently contradictory, but, in reality, completely complementary, approaches. As a consequence, constructional architecture intends to solve a “simple” – to state, but not to solve – multidimensional optimization problem: “what is the best concrete architecture – that is, what are the suitable components with their organization – which answers to the stakeholder ...