Architecture. An important, although confusing and vague, but still commonly used, term in software.
architecture: The fundamental organization of a system embodied in its components, their relationships to each other, and to the environment, and the principles guiding its design and evolution.1
Every software has an architecture, whether it’s well thought or not, well defined or not, or well respected or not.
A good architecture is a great tool for the team(s) to consume to work towards a common goal, but it may or may not correlate with the end result.
And when things go south in a project, you can always crucify the architecture to settle the sins of all the rest in the project.
- IEEE 1471 (2000 – the good old days) ↩︎