Bredemeyer: The Visual Architecting Process

The Visual Architecting Process™ (VAP) covers the techniques, including architecture modeling and architecture trade-off analysis, used in creating a technically sound architecture. It covers architectural requirements and prioritization to create the right architecture, together with architecture validation to ensure that the architects and key stakeholders agree that it is indeed the right architecture. And it covers the organizational process steps that help ensure that the architecture is embraced and used informedly so that, ultimately, the architecture is successful.

The focal deliverable of the architecting process is the architecture document set, motivating and describing the structure of the system through various views. However, though system structuring is at the heart of the architecting process, it is just one of several activities critical to the creation of a good architecture. Architectural requirements are needed to focus the structuring activities. Different architectural approaches tend to yield differing degrees of fit to various system requirements, and evaluating alternatives or performing architectural trade-off analyses should be an integral part of the structuring phase. Lastly, a validation phase provides early indicators of, and hence an opportunity to resolve, problems with the architecture.

Source: https://www.bredemeyer.com/pdf_files/WhitePapers/VisualArchitectingProcess.PDF