Viewpoint Advocacy Groups
(This is an early draft document, created for feedback purposes. It does not reflect a consensus recommendation, or statement of policy at this time.)
Stakeholders in the Architecture have various agendas, goals, and viewpoints. These views are critical to the design of the new grid. This proposal is to create groups to focus on specific requirements. The list of Viewpoint Advocacy Groups may grow and shrink during the course of this project. The idea here is to provide a framework to address specific concerns in a systematic way.
"Membership" in a group is not exclusive. Anyone can participate in as many or few groups as they deem appropriate. Participation in a Advocacy Group does not imply lack of participation in the core AWG, which is merely an umbrella for all working subgroups.
Here is the organizational layout of the VAGs:
Here is a conceptual layout of the VAGs:
Note these groups are just examples of what a group might be. Notice that high level architectural issues are not VAGs, rather, all VAGs will consider high level architectural issues from their unique viewpoints. For example, "Security" is not a viewpoint, so a "Security" VAG would make no sense. All viewpoints will consider security in their own unique way, and provide input.
VAGs can be a way to bring less technical people into the fold and get their valuable input. You do not need to understand the technical issues to provide input into a VAG. The VAG delegates, however, should understand the technical issues involved in fulfilling the architectural requirements of a viewpoint, as this will be required in their participation in the core AWG.
Purpose of Viewpoint Advocacy
The core goals of the AWG are as follows:
- Document rationale for architectural decisions.
- Integrate the requirements of each viewpoint group.
- Negotiate and document conflicts between each viewpoint.
- Integrate feedback from the various viewpoint advocacy groups.
- Produce a coherent architecture.
A successful Viewpoint Advocacy Group requires:
- To present a set of related concerns about the system in the form of a clear viewpoint.
- To document architectural specifications that stem from this viewpoint.
- To consider the architectural needs of likely implementations that fulfill the specifications.
- To operate in a way that allows for alternate implementations that satisfy the viewpoint.
- To work with the core goals to document views and requirements that conflict or are inconsistent.
- To review the core goals against the work output to ensure that the view's requirements are met.
- The end result of the above is an architectural description which reveals the architecture from this viewpoint.
Defining a Viewpoint
A good viewpoint might include the following elements: (borrowing freely from Emery):
- Required:
- Name of the viewpoint
- List of stakeholders holding this viewpoint
- List of concerns addressed by this viewpoint
- Language, modeling techniques, representation method or tools used within this viewpoint
- Source for the viewpoint
- Use Cases
- Optional:
- Consistency/completeness tests for the viewpoint
- Evaluation/analysis techniques
- Heuristics, patterns, other guidelines
- Estimation of associated cost in resources