Tailoring Architecture Centric Design Method with Rapid Prototyping

摘要

Many engineering processes exist in the industry, text books andinternational standards. However, in practice rarely any of the processes arefollowed consistently and literally. It is observed across industries theprocesses are altered based on the requirements of the projects. Two featurescommonly lacking from many engineering processes are, 1) the formal capacity torapidly develop prototypes in the rudimentary stage of the project, 2)transitioning of requirements into architectural designs, when and how toevaluate designs and how to use the throw away prototypes throughout the systemlifecycle. Prototypes are useful for eliciting requirements, generatingcustomer feedback and identifying, examining or mitigating risks in a projectwhere the product concept is at a cutting edge or not fully perceived. Apartfrom the work that the product is intended to do, systemic properties likeavailability, performance and modifiability matter as much as functionality.Architects must even these concerns with the method they select to promotethese systemic properties and at the same time equip the stakeholders with thedesired functionality. Architectural design and prototyping is one of the keyways to build the right product embedded with the desired systemic properties.Once the product is built it can be almost impossible to retrofit the systemwith the desired attributes. This paper customizes the architecture centricdevelopment method with rapid prototyping to achieve the above-mentioned goalsand reducing the number of iterations across the stages of ACDM.