Software Systems Architecture: Working with Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives

12 Producing Architectural Models

As an architect, you face the twin challenges of developing an architectural solution that effectively balances the needs of stakeholders and communicating the important details of that solution to the people who will finance, build, operate, and use it. Because we can’t build the real computer system as part of the architecture definition process—just as a building architect can’t construct a real house, office complex, or skyscraper while designing the building—we have to find ways to represent and analyze the system’s salient features so that our different classes of stakeholders can understand them. We call these representations models.

Definition A model is an abstract or simplified representation of some ...