Introduction and Goals

Short description of the functional requirements, driving forces, extract (or abstract) of requirements. Link to (hopefully existing) requirements documents (with version number and information where to find it).

From the point of view of the end users a system is created or modified to improve support of a business activity and/or improve the quality.

Short textual description, probably in tabular use-case format. If requirements documents exist this overview should refer to these documents.

Keep these excerpts as short as possible. Balance readability of this document with potential redundancy w.r.t to requirements documents.

See Introduction and Goals in the arc42 documentation.

The top three (max five) quality goals for the architecture whose fulfillment is of highest importance to the major stakeholders. We really mean quality goals for the architecture. Don’t confuse them with project goals. They are not necessarily identical.

Consider this overview of potential topics (based upon the ISO 25010 standard):

You should know the quality goals of your most important stakeholders, since they will influence fundamental architectural decisions. Make sure to be very concrete about these qualities, avoid buzzwords. If you as an architect do not know how the quality of your work will be judged…​

A table with quality goals and concrete scenarios, ordered by priorities

Explicit overview of stakeholders of the system, i.e. all person, roles or organizations that

You should know all parties involved in development of the system or affected by the system. Otherwise, you may get nasty surprises later in the development process. These stakeholders determine the extent and the level of detail of your work and its results.

Table with role names, person names, and their expectations with respect to the architecture and its documentation.