Architecture-Centric Engineering

For many organizations, the achievement of business and mission goals is frustrated by software system problems such as

poor quality—seen in, for example, systems crashing or behaving unpredictably, or users judging that a system is unusable; and
slow time to market—seen in missed integration deadlines due to difficulty in identifying root causes of problems

In the Architecture-Centric Engineering (ACE) Initiative, we aim to improve product development and quality by using architecture to gain early confidence in achieving system-related business and mission goals. Our approach results in

early identification and mitigation of design risks—yielding fewer downstream, costly problems and cost savings in integration and test
predictable system quality—creating competitive advantage
flexibility—enabling cost-effective system evolution

How We Can Help

Led by James Ivers, the ACE team help organizations and individuals to

design and analyze software, system, and system-of-systems (SoS) architectures relative to business and mission goals
develop precise models and quantitative analyses of systems for key system qualities such as safety, performance, and reliability
evaluate architecture evolution technical plans
reconstruct a system’s architecture
assess and improve organizational architecture capability