Software Architect's Handbook

Step 4 – Identifying key issues

This step of the process involves identifying the important issues you may be facing in the architecture. These issues may require additional focus because they are areas where mistakes are most likely to be made.

Key issues typically map in one form or another to either quality attributes or cross-cutting concerns. We took a look at quality attributes in Chapter 4, Software Quality Attributes, and will be exploring cross-cutting concerns in Chapter 9, Cross-Cutting Concerns.

Analyzing quality attributes and cross-cutting concerns closely based on the issues you identify will allow you to know which areas to give extra attention to in your design. The design decisions that are made as a result should be documented ...