Scenario-Based Architecting

From WICSA Conference Wiki

Scenarios can be used in many ways to assist in architecting. Here are a few examples <please add more...>:

Strategic scenarios

These describe plausible futures of the world as a whole, focused at a particular application domain. They can be used to direct the development of other scenarios in architecture. An example would be a scenario describing healthcare as being dominated by cost concerns.

Usage scenarios

These describe how a system under development might be used by typical (or nontypical) users. They can be used to determine whether the architecture supports the described kind of use well enough. This kind of scenarios is related (or even identical, depending on the precise definition you employ) to use cases.

Change scenarios

These describe possible future changes in requirements to a particular architecture. They can be used to assess the modifiability of the architecture.

Architecture scenarios

These describe particular architectures that are possible responses to some of the other scenarios mentioned above.

The COPA approach uses various of these kinds of scenarios.