A Methodology for Generating Systems Architectural Glimpse Statements Using the 5W1H Maxim

Attempts to facilitate and streamline systems architecting have resulted in a great number of reusable principles, practices, mechanisms, frameworks, and tools. Such a practice is the use of architectural viewpoints and views. However, as systems change, these practices should also evolve. The increasing scale and complexity of systems resulting from an ever-growing pool of human needs and breakthroughs may lead, in some cases, to an increased gap between the abstraction activities attempting to capture the whole of a system, and the instantiation activities that produce concrete and detailed descriptions of a system’s architecture. To address this issue, this article introduces a new notion, that of architectural glimpse statements, fundamental questions acting as the building blocks for architectural views and products. This notion can help architects ask the right questions in the right manner to create fundamental statements, the elaboration on which can lead directly to concrete architectural products. Working on top of standardized and common approaches, the article introduces a language for the creation of architectural glimpse statements using the 5W1H maxim. Based on this language, a tool and guidelines are also provided to facilitate the usage of glimpses. Finally, the overall methodology is demonstrated in two case studies.