UAF 1.3 RTF Avatar
  1. OMG Issue

UAF13 — Traceability between Views, Viewpoints, and Stakeholder Concerns

  • Key: UAF13-207
  • Status: open  
  • Source: Boeing ( Ms. Sharon Fitzsimmons)
  • Summary:

    Viewpoints are defined as a convention for creation, interpretation, and use of an architecture to frame one or more stakeholder concerns.
    Views are defined as the information item governed by the Viewpoint that communicates some aspect of an architecture.
    Stakeholder Concerns relate to a Viewpoint, and to a View only through its "governed by" relationship to the Viewpoint.
    Views may only be governed by one Viewpoint, but Viewpoints can govern many Views.

    The problem is that the traceability for a Stakeholder Concern only comes through the Viewpoint (not the View itself) and thus every View that is governed by the Viewpoint is said to relate to every Stakeholder Concern framed by the Viewpoint. This may not be true.

    For instance, I will use Resource Connectivity diagrams as an example for a Viewpoint. I have multiple stakeholders that may want to see a Resources Connectivity diagram. One might want to understand the internal connectors of the system. One might want to understand the flow properties of the system. One might want to understand the external connections to the system. If I make three views (one that shows internal connections, one that shows flow properties, and one that shows external connections), then all three Views are governed by the Resource Connectivity Viewpoint, and every stakeholder Concern can be addressed by Resource Connectivity, but not every View does address every stakeholder Concern. Further, I can't use the model relationships to filter my Views by Stakeholder Concern because the traceability provides every view that is governed by the Viewpoint.

    I can solve this by further specifying my Viewpoints. I can specialize Resource Connectivity Viewpoint and require external connections, or internal connections, as related to the Stakeholder Concern. This requires a very high degree of specificity in my viewpoints to ensure that a query across one Stakeholder Concern does not return Views intended for other Stakeholder Concerns.

    It may be better to trace Stakeholder Concerns to the Views themselves (having an "answers" or some other relationship) to allow for limitation on this query.

  • Reported: UAF 1.2 — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 18:40 GMT
  • Updated: Mon, 1 Jul 2024 15:21 GMT