How do you write down a software architecture so that others can use it to develop and maintain a system? How do you train the writers of architecture documentation in your organization to produce documentation of high quality and usefulness?

• How do you organize architecture documentation so that it  best serves its stakeholders?
• What architectural views are the best ones to document for  your architecture and its stakeholders?
• What are the fundamental principles of sound technical  documentation?
• How should you capture architectural information so that  your documentation is in compliance with IEEE/ANSI-Std-1471?
• What is the role of UML in capturing software  architectures?

Overview

The SEI has produced an approach for documenting software architectures known as the "Views and Beyond" approach. It allows software architects to produce only the documentation that has a demonstrated community of consumers, while producing high-quality documentation that will serve the project throughout its entire lifecycle. 

Benefits

The Views and Beyond approach enables architectural stakeholders to obtain maximum benefit from architecture documentation. The book can be used to put all stakeholders in an organization on the same page in terms of expected production and use of that organization's software architecture documentation.

Who Would Benefit

Producers and consumers of architecture documentation, including software architects, software product or project managers, developers, QA and development environment personnel.

Description

The book consists of 11 chapters plus a comprehensive prologue that establishes the conceptual background. A comprehensive example of a well-documented software architecture is given as an appendix. Topics covered include:

• Role and uses of software architecture documentation
• Principles of sound technical documentation
• Architectural views, viewtypes, and styles
• Module views, component-and-connector views, and allocation  views
• Combining views: hybrids and overlays
• Context diagrams
• Documenting variation
• Documenting software interfaces
• Documenting behavior
• Choosing the relevant views
• Documenting a view
• Documenting information that applies across views
• Relation of the Views and Beyond approach to Rational's 4+1  approach, the Siemens Four-Views approach, ANSI/IEEE-Std-1471, and others.
  

Related Course

Documenting Software Architectures

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