What is included in software architecture? A case study in three software organizations

Software architecture is conventionally concerned with the structures at a high abstraction level describing the main constituents of a software system. However, there seems to be no common agreement of what these structures exactly are. This paper acts as an attempt to understand how the viewpoints from which we see the structures are selected. The rationale of having different viewpoints is reflected and a framework of the relationship between software architecture design and information systems development (ISD) is presented. It is noted that the selection of architectural viewpoints is based on the prevalent architectural practices in an organization and on the requirements from the project at hand. Examples of viewpoint selection are shown in the case study on the experiences from three different telecom-area software organizations. They end up using different sets of viewpoints in their software process, because of the differences in their resources, business practices, and technology.