Forces on Architecture Decisions - A Viewpoint

In this paper, the notion of forces as influences upon architecture decisions is introduced. To facilitate the documentation of forces as a part of architecture descriptions, we specify a decision forces viewpoint, which extends our existing framework for architecture decisions, following the conventions of the international architecture description standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010. The applicability of the viewpoint was validated in three case studies, in which senior software engineering students used it to document decisions in software projects, two of which conducted for industrial customers. The results show that the forces viewpoint is a well-received documentation approach, satisfying stakeholder concerns related to traceability between decision forces and architecture decisions.