Documentation

The working reference for the arc42 architecture template.

144 practical tips 35 worked examples

Practical tips and examples for the arc42 template

Everything on this site is organized by the twelve arc42 template sections. Open a section to see what belongs in it, how much detail it deserves, and how other teams have written it.

The template sections

  1. 01 Introduction and Goals Requirements, stakeholder, (top) quality goals 24 tips
  2. 02 Constraints Technical and organizational constraints, conventions 5 tips
  3. 03 Context and Scope Business and technical context, external interfaces 19 tips
  4. 04 Solution Strategy Fundamental solution decisions and ideas 6 tips
  5. 05 Building Block View Abstractions of source code, black-/whiteboxes 28 tips
  6. 06 Runtime View Runtime scenarios: how do building blocks interact 11 tips
  7. 07 Deployment View Hardware and technical infrastructure, deployment 10 tips
  8. 08 Crosscutting Concepts Recurring solution approaches and patterns 11 tips
  9. 09 Architecture Decisions Important, expensive, risky or contentious decisions 10 tips
  10. 10 Quality Requirements Quality requirements overview and detailed quality scenarios 8 tips
  11. 11 Risks and Technical Debt Known problems, risks and technical debt 6 tips
  12. 12 Glossary Definitions of important business and technical terms 6 tips

Navigate by keyword

Our tips are tagged by 56 keywords that will help you navigate. Three of these stand out:

lean You are looking for opportunities to shorten or streamline your documentation pragmatically. You want to reduce efforts without losing content or value. You are working in an agile environment and want to have lightweight documentation – based on the motto: travel light.
thorough You are working in a more formal environment, e.g. developing very large or critical systems with hard quality requirements. Your stakeholders require thoroughness, accuracy and attention to detail. Maybe your systems and their documentation have to be audited.
essential Despite lean and agile, there is some information about your system that you should always document; i.e. quality goals of your architecture.

Browse all 56 keywords ›

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