Software Architecture

A software architecture description (AD) is the work product that captures the fundamental concepts and properties of a software system in its environment — its elements, their relationships, and the principles guiding its design and evolution. It is not a code dump and not a single box-and-arrow picture. Its job is to give stakeholders a shared, tangible model they can use to design, build, analyze, certify, operate, evolve, or reverse-engineer the system.

Three ideas drive everything below: