[Paper Review] Architectural Blueprints: The 4+1 View Model of Software Architecture

Philippe Kruchten|arXiv (Cornell University)|Jun 8, 2020

Advanced Software Engineering Methodologies6 references172 citations

TL;DR

The paper presents Kruchten's 4+1 View Model for describing software architectures using five concurrent views and a corresponding notation, supported by an architecture-centered, scenario-driven, iterative process.

ABSTRACT

This article presents a model for describing the architecture of software-intensive systems, based on the use of multiple, concurrent views. This use of multiple views allows to address separately the concerns of the various stakeholders of the architecture: end-user, developers, systems engineers, project managers, etc., and to handle separately the functional and non functional requirements. Each of the five views is described, together with a notation to capture it. The views are designed using an architecture-centered, scenario-driven, iterative development process.

Motivation & Objective

• Motivate the need to describe software architecture to diverse stakeholders (end-user, developers, systems engineers, project managers).
• Propose a view-based architecture description to address functional and nonfunctional requirements separately.
• Introduce the five views and their notations for comprehensive architectural representation.
• Outline an architecture-centered, scenario-driven, iterative development process for using the model.

Proposed method

• Describe each of the five views and provide a notation to capture it.
• Define how the 4+1 views collectively address different stakeholder concerns.
• Present an architecture-centered, scenario-driven, iterative development process as the guiding method.

Experimental results

Research questions

• RQ1 How can software architectures be described using multiple concurrent views to satisfy diverse stakeholder concerns?
• RQ2 What are the five views in Kruchten's 4+1 View Model, and what notations capture each view?
• RQ3 How should an architecture be developed and iterated to align with scenarios and nonfunctional requirements?

Key findings

• Introduction of five concurrent views (4+1) to describe software-intensive architectures.
• Each view has a designated purpose and notation to capture architectural concerns.
• The model supports separation of functional and nonfunctional requirements by distributing them across views.
• An architecture-centered, scenario-driven, iterative process underpins the use of the model.