Software Systems Architecture: Working with Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives

8 Scope, Concerns, Principles, and Constraints

Architecture definition can often be a voyage of discovery for both the architect and the stakeholders. At the early stages of any software development project, you will find that while the project’s overall goals and objectives are probably accepted and communicated, the detail underneath is still vague. Indeed, one of your objectives as an architect is to take this detail and make it firm and ratified.

However, unless you have some idea where your boundaries are, your journey can become endless. You need a framework to work within that tells you, at a high level of detail, what you should be looking at, what you can ignore because someone else is looking at it, and what you can ignore because ...