Architecture principle
An architecture principle provides a reasoned guideline for recurring decisions about system design.
Guide recurring decisions
An architecture principle is a guideline for technical or organisational design decisions. It describes an intended direction and its rationale. In a fictional example, business rules should be maintained in one place with clear responsibility. When adding a sales integration, this helps assess whether the same pricing rule would otherwise appear in several places.
The principle does not select a specific product or every implementation choice. Describe its scope, consequences and handling of justified exceptions. An exception needs an owner and a review point. Without such detail, a phrase like “we build flexibly” remains too vague to choose between real options.
Sources
Related terms
- Target architectureA target architecture describes the intended structure of a system through its main building blocks, relationships and boundaries.
- Architecture decisionAn architecture decision establishes a significant aspect of software structure. Context and consequences explain why the choice was made.
- Evaluation matrixAn evaluation matrix compares options against common criteria and records assessments together with their basis.
- Exit strategyA prepared route to switch, take over or retire an IT service in an orderly way.
- Migration costsEffort and expenditure for the planned move of data or functions to another environment.
- Investment costsCosts of building a new or expanded IT capability, as considered in project planning.
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