The Irrelevance of Architecture

The architecture of a software-intensive system is largely irrelevant to its end users. Far more important to these stakeholders is the system´s behavior, exhibited by raw, naked, running code. Most interesting system tests should be based on the use cases that are identified incrementally over the system´s life cycle, the same use cases that the system´s architects used to guide their design decisions. Testers can conduct other system tests only after the system´s architecture is crisp. Just as analysts use a system´s architecture as scaffolding along which to climb and examine the details of every edge, so too can testers use a system´s architecture to devise tests that are relevant to the particular texture of that implementation