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The IEEE 1471:2000 standard defines architecture as:

"The fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment, and the principles governing its design and evolution."

This definition of architecture is one of the most widely used in most of the literature I’ve read. This definition tries to capture what an architecture is, being "the fundamental organization of a system, embodied in its components, their relationships to each other and the environment". The definition does not describe what components one can expect to find in a architecture or how detailed the description  of the architecture should be. This definition does imply that an architecture as having a current-state and a future state and that the architecture evolves over time. Over and above having a current and future state, an architecture has principles that are used to govern architectural decisions and the architectures evolution.

This definition requires that good architecture has:

• A current state architecture
• A future state architecture
• A set of principles to guide the architecture’s evolution

Does your architecture have these three important components?

Technorati Tags: Architecture, Definition, IEEE, 1471,Principles, Enterprise Architecture, EA

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