ABSTRACT
Purpose The primary purpose of stage 3 is for the architecture design team to create the initial architectural design, or refine the architectural design based on the results of the architectural evaluation. If this is the first iteration in stage 3, then the initial notional architecture design will be created. Once the architecture is designed in stage 3 it is evaluated in stage 4. After the evaluation of stage 4, the team will make a decision to build the system or continue refining the design. Stage 5 is where this decision is made. If the decision is to continue refining the design (stage 5), then issues uncovered in the evaluation are addressed in stage 6 through experimentation. After stage 6 experimentation, the architecture design team then returns to stage 3 to refine the architecture design based on the issues uncovered during the evaluation. The team then conducts another evaluation of the refined architecture, and then moves on to stage 5 to once again decide if the design is ready for implementation or if more refinement is needed.
