Validation of system architectures against requirements

Abstract

Design decisions are based on several criteria affecting each other. The architect is responsible for ensuring that the decisions fit the system requirements. This validation process is time-consuming work which has to be repeated if the requirements change. The use of various documentation forms complicates this work. In this chapter, we describe an approach for supporting the architect in validating the architecture against the requirements. It allows an automation of the validation process and offers support for the impact analysis. It can be applied in an early as well as in an advanced project phase. For documentation, we apply the Unified Modeling Language wherever possible and reasonable in order to achieve consistent system documentation. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media.