How Business Goals Drive Architectural Design

This paper illustrates how business goals can significantly impact a software management system's architecture without necessarily affecting its functionality. These goals include 1) supporting hardware devices from different manufacturers, 2) considering language, culture, and regulations of different markets, 3) assessing tradeoffs and risks to determine how the product should support these goals, 4) refining goals such as scaling back on intended markets, depending on the company's comfort level with the tradeoffs and risks. More importantly, these business goals correspond to quality attributes the end system must exhibit. The system must be modifiable to support a multitude of hardware devices and consider different languages and cultures. Supporting different regulations in different geographic markets requires the system to respond to life-threatening events in a timely manner performance requirement.