Workflow Detail: Define the Architecture

Purpose How to Staff Work Guidelines

Purpose

The purpose of this detailed workflow is to:

• To incorporate the experience of the Worker: Architect from similar projects in similar problem domains
• To structure and refine the results of Activity: Use-Case Analysis, Activity: Subsystem Design, Activity: Class Design, and Activity: Use-Case Design, creating a consistent architecture that spans the entire design process.

How to Staff

See section "Staffing" in the following Worker descriptions:

• Worker: Architect
• Worker: Architecture Reviewer

Work Guidelines

The architectural activities are performed in parallel with the other analysis and design activities, with particular emphasis during the early Elaboration iterations. It is essential that the architecture stabilize by the end of Elaboration in order for the Construction phase to deliver a series of incremental releases. 

Architectural changes tend to span the architectural views: changes in the distribution of the system (the deployment view) inevitably lead to changes in the process architecture (process view), the logical structure of the system (the logical view), and the physical organization of the project artifacts (the implementation view). Throughout the early iterations, a fair amount of architectural rework is to be expected.