Glossary

ARC Community Definitions

Architecture

 (from the Greek words for first & craftsmanship) is the art and science of designing systems. A software architecture identifies components and their associated functionality, describes connectivity of components, and describes the mapping of functionality onto components. It embodies a logically consistent set of principles that guide the design and development of software systems.

Design

 The plan or arrangement of elements in a work of art. An iterative decision-making process that produces plans by which resources are converted into products or systems. Design efforts focus on addressing how a system will accomplish its architectural requirements.

Implementation

 The process of constucting an actual artifact from a design. In software development, this includes at least the tasks of coding, testing and debugging.

Risk

 From a "systems" level, architectural risks include:

• dependency risks related to components evolving at different speeds,
• coordination risks exposed by asynchronous delivery schedules,
• communication risks associated with multiple distributed development teams,
• stability and compatability risks when upgrading/patching, etc.
• interoperability risks between multiple deployed versions on a system or network
• etc.