Architecture is both a design activity (process) as well as the schema of fundamental things about a system (work product). As a design activity, architecture is the act of creating a representation of an unknown and original object whose properties (like technical aspects, formal and spatial structures) must be well enough understood in advance. As a work product, architecture is the structure of the components of a system, their interrelationships, externally visible properties of those components and principles and guidelines governing their design and evolution over time. Handling this duality and realizing architectural designs that improve the value of the solution within cost limitations; provisioning for evolution over the system lifetime; considering the needs of all stakeholders; and ensuring that the system is well matched to its environment are the typical responsibilities of Architects.
The outcome of Architecting process is the Architecture. Traditionally, this process provides general guidance to the Architect and utilizes an envelope of practices and design patterns that govern the Architecture creation. Its purpose is to aid the Architect to synthesize a solution that satisfies the requirements and it is the responsibility of the Architect to identify the right practices/patterns necessary for creating an appropriate solution. While most of the existing practices look at developing an Architecture that satisfies the requirements identified by the Architect, we propose a context understanding, value proposition, function specification, and value realization based approach for Architecting that is based on the value co-creation system that exists in the system development and usage life cycle.
In this paper, we discuss about the theoretical framework necessary for such an approach. This theoretical framework is based on insights arrived at by asking six questions that needs to be answered for the system to succeed economically. These six questions are:
a. How does one understand the Context in which Value is created by the System and its usage?
b. What are the benefits of using the system and how to discover, diagnose and understand these benefits?
c. What are the Quality characteristics that results in this benefits? How does one derive these quality characteristics?
d. What are the Functions of the System that will exhibits these qualities? How does one derive these functions?
e. What is the underlying Structure of the system that will host these functions? How does one arrive at this form?
f. What are the Processes that the System should support? How does one design these processes?
The basis of the framework is the values viewpoint for creating and describing systems. We illustrate our theoretical framework and approach by describing a management workbench.
Keywords – Value, Quality, Function, Structure, Process, Context, Context Understanding, Value Proposition, Value Realization, Architecture, Architecting, Value based Approach