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Software Architecture Guide

Stakeholder Perspective and Concern

Explanation

Section titled “Explanation”

Start with the thing being described. ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 calls it the entity of interest. It can be a system, software, an enterprise or another thing whose architecture you describe (see ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 Architecture Description Model).

Stakeholders are individuals, teams or organizations with an interest in that entity.

Concerns are the interests those stakeholders hold in it. Typical examples are performance, security and maintainability.

Different stakeholder groups have their own requirements, interests and needs. The architect must balance and prioritize them.

How concerns shape documentation

  • A view shows how the architecture addresses one or more concerns held by one or more stakeholders. So concerns drive which views you build. See Architecture View.
  • A viewpoint names the stakeholders whose concerns it reflects. This links stakeholders and concerns to the choice of viewpoint. See Architecture Viewpoint.
  • arc42 asks for an explicit stakeholder overview. For each stakeholder, it lists their expectations of the architecture and its documentation.
  • arc42 quality goals are the ones most important to the major stakeholders. They influence fundamental architectural decisions.

Example

Section titled “Example”

A team documents an online booking system. The operations team cares about maintainability. The security officer cares about security. The business sponsor cares about performance during sales.

The architect lists these three stakeholders and their concerns. Then the architect picks views that address each concern. One view might show deployment for operations. Another might show data protection for the security officer. Each view states which concern it serves.

Trade-offs

Section titled “Trade-offs”

Stakeholder groups have different needs, so their concerns can compete. The architect must balance and prioritize them. Not every concern can be top priority. arc42 handles this by focusing quality goals on what matters most to the major stakeholders.

Stakeholders hold concerns about the entity of interest. Viewpoints and views address those concerns.

Diagram source 
flowchart LR
  S[Stakeholder] -->|holds| C[Concern]
  S -->|has interest in| E[Entity of interest]
  VP[Viewpoint] -->|reflects concerns of| S
  V[View] -->|addresses| C
  VP -->|governs| V

Checks

Section titled “Checks”
  • The document contains a stakeholder overview that lists roles and each stakeholder’s expectations of the architecture and its documentation.
  • Each view states which stakeholder concerns it addresses.
  • Each viewpoint names the stakeholders whose concerns it reflects.
  • The quality goals are the ones most important to the major stakeholders.
Section titled “Related”

Sources

Section titled “Sources”