Architecture Development Lessons-Learned: A Three-Year Retrospective

This is a retrospective synthesis of three years of experience developing detailed architectural views in compliance with the Command, Control, Communications, Computers Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) Architecture Framework, the 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, system 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 three 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. We take the point of view in this report of an action or mid-level staff officer who has just been tasked with developing an architecture. We try to provide a minimum set of "rules of the road" lessons learned to assist in architecture development its tools. Two appendices detail our experiences with SA (Popkin Software's System Architect) and our analysis of the impacts of the new security policy imposed by the Office of Management and Budget on architecture information.