TABLE OF CONTENTS The word architecture takes on many meanings. The author uses the word to cover the physical entities of which the system consists piled up in a hierarchical breakdown diagram. Others picture architecture in a more dynamic sense including the physical things in the system as well as a scenario view of how those things will be used. Some system engineers refer to the functional or logical and the physical architecture. Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DOD AF) entails 26 different diagrams. So, when discussing this matter with others, particularly people from the customer's ranks, try to reach an understanding of the other person's concept of architecture early in the conversation.
As the structured analysis process proceeds, it generates allocations of the needed functionality of the system, or performance requirements derived from those functions, to specific physical entities through trade studies, an appeal to historical precedent, good engineering judgment, and respect for customer direction to use specific resources in the system. Government furnished property is an example of the latter when dealing with the government, but any customer may have residual property from other systems they wish to make continued use of in a new or updated system.
The engineering community, in concert with the production and logistics communities must decide how to organize these allocations into families of things. We must map the evolving architecture to: (1) organizations responsible for the development of each item, (2) the evolving planned manufacturing process flow, (3) the customer's...
