Work Product Descriptor (Artifact): Architecture Overview
An informal rich picture or storyboard that illustrates the essential nature of the proposed architecture. It conveys the governing ideas and major building blocks of the architecture.
Purpose

The purpose of this artifact is to:

  • Communicate to the sponsor and external stakeholders a conceptual understanding of the architectural goals and intended architecture
  • Provide a high-level vision of the architecture and its scope to developers
  • Explore and evaluate alternative architectural options
  • Enable early recognition and validation of the implications of the architectural approach
  • Facilitate effective communication between different communities of stakeholders and developers
  • Facilitate orientation for new people who join the project
Relationships
RolesResponsible: Modified By:
Input ToMandatory: Optional:
  • None
External:
  • None
Output From
Description
Main Description

This artifact provides an overview of the main conceptual elements and relationships of an architecture, which might include candidate subsystems, components, nodes, connections, data stores, users and external systems. As such, it represents the governing ideas and candidate building blocks of the architecture.

Brief Outline

The Architecture Overview contains the following sections:

  • Architectural Goals - describes the philosophy of the architecture and goals that the architecture needs to meet in its structure and behavior
  • Architecture Overview Diagram - depicts the major elements of the architecture and their relationships
  • Key Concepts - describes major architectural concepts, including key elements in the diagram
Notation

The notation consists of one or more informal diagrams (not necessarily created using formal modeling tools) together with supporting text describing the major architectural concepts.

It includes elements such as:

  • Delivery mechanisms the architecture supports, such as home internet terminals and kiosks
  • The separation of functions
  • Hardware, such as distributed servers and workstations
  • A listing of tiers
  • Access to legacy systems

Diagrams are usually static in nature showing the relationships between components. However, where it makes sense to do so, the overview might include dynamic views showing collaborations between the architectural components. The diagrams might show functional views, operational views, or a combination of the two.

The Architecture Overview might include diagrams for more than one alternative architectural solution to enable stakeholders to evaluate the tradeoffs between options.

Properties
Optional
Planned
Illustrations
Key Considerations
As communication is its main purpose, it is more important for the description of the architecture to be simple, brief, clear, and understandable than comprehensive or accurate in all details.
Tailoring
Impact of not having

Not having this artifact might result in one or more of the following:

  • The overall shape and style of the architecture is not communicated effectively with sponsors and users
  • Project team members do not grasp the big picture, and problems will not be identified early, when they can be remedied inexpensively
  • Communities of users and interested parties fail to find a common language to talk about the system
  • Users and project team members require a longer orientation and learning time
Reasons for not needing

It might be unnecessary to produce this artifact if any of the following are true: 

  • The architecture is trivial or relies on already well-established environments, practices or styles
  • It is sufficient to modify or refer to an existing overview document. In this instance, all of the following must be true:
    • The proposed architecture is small
    • The type of architecture is familiar to both users and project team members
    • There are few needs for communication across communities; this means, for example, there is one user group and one development team
    • The architecture is very small and simple; for example, it can take the form of a diagram and a couple paragraphs in a project overview document
    • There are architecture model work products that provide a sufficient overview
Representation OptionsThe Architecture Overview is an informal representation of the architecture and is usually created using drawing tools such as Microsoft PowerPoint or Visio.  You can use more formal modeling tools if they are standard for your organization.
More Information
Checklists
Estimation Considerations