Structural Complexity in Architecture-Centric Software Evolution

In a previous Computer column, "How Business Goals Drive Architectural Design" (Aug. 2007, pp. 101-103), an architecture-centric approach to software design in which the final architecture embodies the systemic properties and nonfunctional requirements that are critical to the application\´s success was proposed. Here, it is considered whether such an approach produces systems that are subsequently easier to evolve. Using an Internet-based collaborative system and its whiteboard subsystem as an example, it is shown that architecture-centric methods can result in a significantly improved system that not only meets its quality expectations but is not excessively complex.