The Architecture is the Blueprint for the Code

This chapter explores the relationship between architectural design and programming in the small. Compared to relationships to other working areas such as requirements engineering or quality assurance, the architecture and the implementation of a software system are coupled tightly: The architecture serves as a blueprint for the implementation of the software system to be developed. Essentially, the architecture defines the skeleton of the system that is complemented with code written by programmers. Accordingly, the conformance of the implementation with the architecture may be defined by a set of consistency relations. Finally, different variants of processes describing the coupling between activities in the working areas architectural design and programming in the small are elaborated and compared.