Architecture and architectural design of complex systems

Defining the architecture of a system of interest can be seen as the expression of a strategy or vision for the system. Knowing how to develop and design a good architecture has a number of beneficial effects for system engineering, such as the ability to organize work packages, control interfaces, and achieve and maintain cost/performance trade-offs.

The different activities involved in designing architecture, and the reasoning methods required, are detailed in this article.

Once the architecture has been designed, it needs to be reported on and shared with various stakeholders. However, given the diversity of stakeholders and issues, there can be no single point of view, but rather different views grouped into different points of view (for a given community). This is made possible by the definition of architecture frameworks that are part of a governance approach at project or company level, discussed at the end of this article.