System Architecture: Strategy and Product Development for Complex Systems, First Edition

10.9 Downstream Influence: Product and System Evolution, and Product Families

In modern practice, few products or systems of any complexity are built without some consideration of how they are related to other products. Terms often used to describe this planning include:

• Reuse, legacy, product extensions

• Product lines, preplanned product improvements

• Product platforms, modularity, commonality, standardization

So far in this text, we have focused on the creation of architecture from a blank slate. In our experience, questioning the first principles of an architecture leads to the most holistic evaluation of opportunity, even if some of the options considered are later eliminated as infeasible due to constraints from the architectural legacy ( ...