AVDM: A Risk-Informed Decision Model for Architecture Viewpoint Selection

Architecture views are widely used to support design reasoning and architecture review in software-intensive systems. In practice, however, architectural documentation is often driven by fixed checklists or convention, leading to either excessive artifacts with limited decision value or insufficient visibility into dominant architectural uncertainty. Although existing viewpoint taxonomies clarify available viewpoints and associated concerns, they provide limited guidance on how viewpoints should be selected and instantiated in specific project contexts. This paper presents AVDM (Architecture Viewpoint Decision Model), a decision-oriented model that treats viewpoint selection as an explicit architectural decision activity rather than a documentation task. AVDM uses architectural risk as an informational signal to prioritize viewpoints and evaluates their expected decision value based on project characteristics. Viewpoint instantiation outcomes are classified as mandatory, recommended, or optional, instead of prescribing fixed documentation sets. Multiple industrial case studies illustrate how AVDM improves decision transparency, focuses architecture reviews, and exposes cross-domain and non-functional uncertainty while structuring—rather than replacing—architectural judgment.