System Architecture

The purpose of system architecture activities is to define a comprehensive solution based on principles, concepts, and properties logically related and consistent with each other. The solution architecture has features, properties, and characteristics satisfying, as far as possible, the problem or opportunity expressed by a set of system requirements (traceable to mission/business and stakeholder requirements) and life cycle concepts (e.g., operational, support) and are implementable through technologies (e.g., mechanics, electronics, hydraulics, software, services, procedures).

System Architecture is abstract, conceptualization-oriented, global, and focused to achieve the mission and operational concepts of the system. It also focuses on high‐level structure in systems and system elements. It addresses the architectural principles, concepts, properties, and characteristics of the system-of-interest. It may also be applied to more than one system, in some cases forming the common structure, pattern, and set of requirements for classes or families of similar or related systems.

General Concepts and Principles

Notion of Structure

The SEBoK considers systems engineering to cover all aspects of the creation of a system, including system architecture.

The majority of interpretations of system architecture are based on the fairly intangible notion of structure (i.e. relationships between elements). 

Some authors limit the types of structure considered to be architectural; for example, restricting themselves to functional and physical structure. Recent practice has extended consideration to include behavioral, temporal and other dimensions of structure within specified architectural frameworks (DoDAF (DoD 2010) and MODAF (MOD 2010)).

ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 (2011) provides a useful description of the architecture considering the stakeholder concerns, architecture viewpoints, architecture views, architecture models, architecture descriptions, and architecting throughout the life cycle. A discussion of the features of systems architectures can be found in Maier and Rechtin (2009).

An attempt to develop and apply a systematic approach to characterizing architecture belief systems in systems engineering has been described by the INCOSE UK Architecture Working Group (Wilkinson et al.2010, Wilkinson 2010).

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