Application Architecture Guide 2.0 BETA 1 - Willy .Net

1. They are important for the success and acceptance of the deployed application.
2. They exercise enough of the design to be useful in evaluating the architecture.
After you have determined architecturally significant use cases for your application, you can use
them as a way to evaluate the success or failure of candidate architectures. If a candidate
architecture addresses more use cases, or addresses existing use cases more effectively, it will
help you to determine that this candidate architecture is an improvement over the baseline
architecture.
Analyzing and Evaluating Architecture
Use architecture evaluation to determine the feasibility of your baseline and candidate
architectures. Architecture evaluation is a key component of successful architecture iterations.
Consider the following techniques for architecture evaluation:
• Architecturally significant use cases. Test your design against use cases that are important
to the success of your application, and which exercise a significant portion of the design.
• Scenario-based evaluations. Use scenarios to analyze your design with a focus on quality
attributes. Examples of scenario-based evaluations are: Architecture Trade-off Analysis
Method (ATAM), Software Architecture Analysis Method (SAAM), and Active Reviews for
Intermediate Designs (ARID).
Representing and Communicating the Architecture
Communicating your design is critical for architecture reviews, as well as for the use of your
architecture during implementation. In the end, your architecture is only as good as the quality
of communication of your ideas. You must communicate your architectural design to a variety
of roles, including system designers, developers, system administrators, and management.
One way to think of an architectural view is as a map of the important decisions. The map is not
the terrain. Instead, it is an abstraction that helps you to share and communicate the
architecture.
The Architectural Landscape
Understand the key forces at work that are shaping architectural decisions today, and which
will change how architectural decisions are made in the future. These key forces are driven by
user demand; as well as by business demand for faster results, better support for varying work
styles and workflows, and improved adaptability of software design.
Consider the following key forces and responses:
• User Empowerment. A design that supports user empowerment is flexible, configurable
and focused on the user experience. Design your application with user personalization and
options in mind. Allow the user to define how they interact with your application instead of
dictating to them. Understand the key scenarios and make them as simple as possible;
make it easy to find information and use the application.
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