Architecture Development Lessons-Learned: A Three-Year Retrospective

This report is a retrospective synthesis of 3 years of experience developing detailed architectural views in compliance with the Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Architecture Framework, the Department of Defense (DoD) guidance that implemented the statutory requirements of the Clinger-Cohen Act of 1997. It represents the collective judgment of nine professionals, all of whom had Air Force operational and/or systems development and experience, or both; were formally trained in architecture development; and have been dedicated to the development of these architecture views almost exclusively. After more than 3 years of developing architectures, all these lessons-learned point to one basic conclusion: architectures are developed to be used. Thus, it is incumbent upon the architecture developer to work with the user to create something that has practical and immediate application to that user's needs. Everything else -- development process, tools, methods, etc. -- should be subordinated to this utility. In this report, the authors take the point of view of an action or mid-level staff officer who has just been tasked with developing an architecture. They try to provide a minimum set of rules of the road lessons learned to assist in architecture development and its tools. Two appendices detail their experiences with SA (Popkin Software's System Architect) and their analysis of the impacts of the new security policy imposed by the Office of Management and Budget on architecture information. Project No. 03046970CX.