Documenting Software Architectures: Views and Beyond

This is one of those books about which it is difficult to say enough good things. I found the first edition very influential on my on thinking to say nothing of enlightening. Impressively, the authors have improved this second edition, for example moving the comprehensive sample documentation online, thus making room for more of the lucid and rational explanation of documentation practices that made the first edition so useful.I usually include a discussion of who would benefit from a reading in my reviews. Anybody who thinks they might be producers or consumers of software architecture documentation owes it to themselves to get a copy of this book now. Others might think they have no need for this book, but still should read it. This includes Business Analysts, who, this book makes clear, are stakeholders of software architectures. BAs will also their thinking sharpened on how to develop useful documentation and use graphical notation in a precise and meaningful fashion.This book is on my short list of classics of software engineering. It is a book I return to often. Reading this second edition, even after being fully familiar with the first, was still a richly satisfying experience. I cannot recommend this book enough.

This is an exceptionally well-written book, and I'm glad to have it in my library. It gives thorough and detailed advice, with plenty of sidebars and cross references. The book has a URL to a website that presents an architectural description that embodies many of the recommendations from the book. There were some areas where the book fell short of what I was looking for guidance on: (1) the intersection of the requirements document and the architecture document; (2) the intersection the architecture document and the detailed design specification; (3) where & how interaction scenarios are documented (the book does mention use cases and includes them in a view in the example architecture document). Still, the book covers so much so well. If you have an interest in creating software architecture documents, I highly recommend this book.

Some of us have been practicing software modeling since the early days of Rational Rose (about 20 years ago!) And still we find this business of describing a system's architecture to be vexing. Just give us some rules! Ah, but it's not so simple. Our job as architects and designers is not to just fill out a template. It's to wrap our brains around requirements, ponder solutions, innovate, and sort it all out for ourselves and others. This book feels like modeling 5.0 or something like that. It's an evolutionary next step in the art and craft of communicating software architectures. Paul Clements and team have done a good job of proposing a framework for exploring and communicating designs. It's kind of easy to remember (three views). Yet they recognize that this problem doesn't have a formulaic solution. I might complain that the book doesn't actually work through a complete example--rather, it is rich with tiny examples of each view and style. The comprehensive example is online. Based on personal experience, I might add that this approach needs the support of modern presentation techniques. Audiences--even highly technical ones--may not warm up to a purely views-based presentation. All in all, I highly recommend this book to all software practitioners.

Great

Did get some ideas, but wasn't great.

This is a second edition and has added extra material along with discussing some of the impacts of how overall software development process has changed since the first edition.

This should be a must-read for any Computer Science student. Generations of IT folks are struggling with poorly documented applications because the art of documentation is so under-appreciated. This books tries to give hints and tools to address this problems. Highly recommended.

Muy buen material con ejercicios prácticos. Con su ayuda ya implementé un proyecto exitoso.