Guidelines for Architecture Models as Boundary Objects

In this chapter, we derive design principles for architectural models, so that they support communication across different communities of practice by acting as boundary objects. Specifically, we derive design principles for overcoming a semantic knowledge boundary, a boundary that exists when different communities of practice fail to arrive at a shared understanding.The boundary object properties associated with overcoming semantic knowledge boundaries are visualisation, modularity, abstraction/concreteness, and stability. For the visualisation property, we derive design principles from an experimental setup; for the latter three, we consult extant literature.For the visualisation property, building cognitively efficient models is identified as an important contributor. For the modularity property, providing all information in one place and relying on user-based contextualisation is found beneficial. To balance between abstraction and concreteness, establishing navigation capabilities among different layers of abstraction is considered helpful. Finally, for the stability property, retaining a stable structure and a controlled versioning/release process is found beneficial.