Software Systems Architecture: Working with Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives, Second Edition

16. The Context Viewpoint

Many architecture descriptions we’ve seen focus on views that model the system’s internal structures, data elements, interactions, and operation. Architects tend to assume that the “outward-facing” information—the system’s runtime context, its scope and requirements, and so forth—is clearly and unambiguously defined elsewhere. In fact, in the first edition of this book, we didn’t have a viewpoint for the system’s context for this very reason. However, we have decided that we were wrong! In practice, it often isn’t realistic to delegate all of these concerns elsewhere, and you frequently need to include a definition of ...