This book offers the first complete roadmap for building software architectures that achieve the most demanding goals-now, and for years to come. Discover how to establish a product-line architechtural framework and vision that managers, administrators and developers can buy into.
This book is unusual for a software "architecture" book in that it takes on the soft side of the problem. Rather than focusing on technology and design it tackles the cultural and political issues commonly present in medium to large sized organizations.
The author asserts that the software architect should focus on establishing and maintaining Vision, Rythm, Anticipation, Partnering and Simplification (VRAPS). Each of these components is treated in its own section and illustrated in the context of a real-world development effort.
I applied VRAPS in a large enterprise software company and found very effective.
I may be a bit biased, since the book was dedicated to me (along with the other authors' significant others). However, it is quite good and timeless. These principles apply even when the software changes. It's about how organizations function, or do not function!