The Architecture is the Center of the Software Development Process

The purpose of this chapter is to explain the specific role architecture modeling and the resulting architectures have in software development projects: The processes are only possible by extracting the essentials of the system and denote them separately on architecture level. The architecture is the most important collection of artifacts, as the architecture influences most of the results gained in the process in a more or less substantial way. The architecture not only determines the structure, the quality, and the clearness of the system to be constructed or maintained. It also influences the structure, quality, and clearness of the code, of quality assurance, documentation, and of project organization. From this central importance of architecture modeling and the resulting architecture, we continue with further aspects as sketches: The architecture determines the adaptability of the system, the architecture is the key for project organization, the architecture determines whether maintenance is possible (also via reverse and reengineering), and it determines the level of reuse. All these further aspects are later explained in more detail and in own chapters.