P. Daniel Borches

A3 Architecture Overviews

Creating complex systems from scratch is time consuming and costly, therefore a development strategy often chosen by companies is to evolve existing systems. Reuse of existing knowledge and experience becomes essential to support the evolution process. Complex systems are usually the result of multidisciplinary teams, which means that an effective way to capture, organize and present this knowledge, in a fashion that can be used by different stakeholders is crucial. Typically, some of this knowledge is present in the form of text documents. However, much of that knowledge is usually hidden or lost, especially in long-lived systems. This leads to unexpected problems that could be prevented if the company reuses the knowledge it already has. An approach, based on the creation of A3 Architecture Overviews by an architecting method, is proposed to capture and share key architectural knowledge, enhancing communication and understanding among team members. We show that the proposed method to capture architectural knowledge provides an effective framework to support decision making when evolving complex systems.