# ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 Architecture Description Standard

**In short:** ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 is an international standard for describing architectures. It separates a system's architecture from its description, and it builds the description from views and viewpoints.

## Explanation

ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 is a standard about how to describe an architecture. It does not describe one particular architecture. It defines the ideas an architecture description should use.

**History.** IEEE Standard 1471 was the predecessor. It formalized the view concepts in 2000. The 2011 edition of 42010 was approved by ISO member bodies in July 2011, by a vote of 21 to 0. A second edition, ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2022, was released in November 2022.

**Architecture versus description.** The standard treats a system's architecture and the description of it as two different things. The description is what you write down to tell others about the architecture.

**Views and viewpoints.** An architecture description consists of one or more architecture views. A viewpoint frames one or more stakeholder concerns. A stakeholder is a person or group with an interest in the system. A concern is something they care about. See the articles Architecture View, Architecture Viewpoint, Stakeholder and Concern.

**Languages.** An architecture description language (ADL) is any means of expression used to describe a software architecture.

## Example

A team builds an online shop. The owner worries about running costs. Operations staff worry about uptime. The team picks one viewpoint for each worry. The cost viewpoint leads to a view of hosting. The uptime viewpoint leads to a view of servers and failover. Together these views form the architecture description. The running shop itself stays separate from those documents.

An architecture description is formed from views; a viewpoint frames stakeholder concerns.

```mermaid
flowchart LR
  A[Architecture description] --> V[Architecture view]
  P[Viewpoint] -->|frames| C[Stakeholder concern]
  V -.- P
```

## Checks

- The document describes the architecture through one or more architecture views.
- Each viewpoint used states which stakeholder concerns it frames.
- The description is kept distinct from the architecture of the system it describes.

## Related

- [ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 Architecture Description Model](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/documentation/iso-iec-ieee-42010-architecture-description-model.md)
- [Architecture View](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/documentation/architecture-view.md)
- [Architecture Viewpoint](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/documentation/architecture-viewpoint.md)
- [Stakeholder](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/vision-stakeholders/stakeholder.md)
- [Concern](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/forces-decisions/concern.md)
- [Architecture View Model](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/documentation/architecture-view-model.md)
- [arc42 Architecture Documentation Template](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/documentation/arc42-documentation-template.md)
- [C4 Model](https://arc.fuet.ch/concepts/documentation/c4-model.md)

## Sources

- [TRAK Architecture Framework - Conformance with International Standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010](https://trak.sourceforge.io/iso_42010.html) — trak.sourceforge.io, accessed 2026-11-09
- [ISO/IEC 42010 - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_42010) — en.wikipedia.org, accessed 2026-11-09
- [Software Systems Architecture: Viewpoints and Views | Architectural Views | InformIT](https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1766161) — informit.com, accessed 2026-11-09
- [Software architecture description - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_architecture_description) — en.wikipedia.org, accessed 2026-11-09