Title: Tailoring Architecture Centric Design Method with Rapid Prototyping,
Abstract: Many engineering processes exist in the industry, text books and
international standards. However, in practice rarely any of the processes are
followed consistently and literally. It is observed across industries the
processes are altered based on the requirements of the projects. Two features
commonly lacking from many engineering processes are, 1) the formal capacity to
rapidly develop prototypes in the rudimentary stage of the project, 2)
transitioning of requirements into architectural designs, when and how to
evaluate designs and how to use the throw away prototypes throughout the system
lifecycle. Prototypes are useful for eliciting requirements, generating
customer feedback and identifying, examining or mitigating risks in a project
where the product concept is at a cutting edge or not fully perceived. Apart
from the work that the product is intended to do, systemic properties like
availability, performance and modifiability matter as much as functionality.
Architects must even these concerns with the method they select to promote
these systemic properties and at the same time equip the stakeholders with the
desired functionality. Architectural design and prototyping is one of the key
ways to build the right product embedded with the desired systemic properties.
Once the product is built it can be almost impossible to retrofit the system
with the desired attributes. This paper customizes the architecture centric
development method with rapid prototyping to achieve the above-mentioned goals
and reducing the number of iterations across the stages of ACDM.