Why architectures are becoming increasingly important

Just as you can't build a house without an architecture, architectures are also essential for systems. The architecture is the skeleton of our system.

Architectures have been around for thousands of years, and system architecture is also over half a century old. But architectures are more important today than ever for several reasons.

Also worth reading: What is Architecture? from Tom Westbury

What is architecture?

The architecture is the structure of the system. The book Just Enough Systems Engineering has a chapter on the subject that is well worth reading. In particular, every system has an architecture: this can be created by chance or deliberately designed. Of course, planned architectures are generally much better.

Architectures have always ensured that the parts of a system work together optimally. They are also extremely useful for work planning, as they allow the individual parts of the system to be decoupled. Furthermore, architectures can ensure that "best practices" that have proven themselves in practice are taken into account.

But architectures are becoming increasingly important in systems engineering. So important, in fact, that the wrong choice can threaten a company's existence. Here are the most important ones:

An early market entry can make the difference between success and failure. And there are now standard architectures for many areas that save a huge amount of work. For example, there are numerous frameworks that can be used to implement complete web applications in just a few days. There are also architectures in the hardware sector, for example for chipsets or connectors.

Architectures also accelerate development through reuse and make it possible to deal effectively with variants.

Security is an issue that is currently dampening growth in the IoT sector, as recently reported. Relying on existing architectures is a sensible approach to consider security from the outset without great effort. To this end, manufacturers offer ready-made packages consisting of chipset, software and guidelines.

Especially when it comes to safety, compliance is an issue. Regulations must be taken into account. There are also architectures that take this into account. This includes, for example Autosar in the automotive environment. Risk management is part of this, and the article System architecture and risk management - two peas in a pod shows how these two activities interact in practice.

When used correctly, architectures are an enabler that accelerates development time, increases quality and reduces risks. Many of the required product features can be obtained virtually for free.

At SE-Trends there are a lot to read about architecturesfor good reason. Have fun with it!

Photo by Joel Filipe on Unsplash