Defining the Character of an Architecture Using Life Cycle Concepts: Phase and Stage Concepts in ISO/IEC/IEEE 42024 – An Emerging Standard on Architecture Fundamentals

Abstract An emerging standard on architecture fundamentals is under development to be published as ISO/IEC/IEEE 42024. This paper is a companion to a separate paper describing the evolving content of ISO 42024, but concentrates on an aspect that is notable, namely the clarification and enrichment of the concept of life cycles that in the past has caused some confusion. This is the result of using and combining the treatment of the life cycle concept elaborated in both ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 and ISO 15704 / GERAM, as well as clarification of the difference between modelling dimensions and modelling aspects based on ISO/IEC 63339, which is relevant for any architecting effort, including enterprises, systems and software. Decades of methodology wars (e.g. top‐down, spiral, agile, DevOps, etc.) did not facilitate a common understanding due to the lack of mapping these methodologies to a uniform life history model.