Describing and sharing architecture
Architecting complex systems

As we saw earlier, architectural decisions set the pace for architectural design. Each decision taken, or compromise reached, shapes the architectural solution more and more precisely. This sheds light on certain points, while deliberately leaving a degree of vagueness and uncertainty, thus creating room for freedom for the various engineering teams, while at the same time pointing them in the right direction.

An architectural description must reveal the direction taken, the big ideas, the principles that will subsequently direct engineering, industrialization and operations, and not the details. It does not aim for coherence or completeness (unlike systems engineering representations). More precisely, an...