[barrystaes]

I always like to make the destinction between models on architecture for developers (the solution description) and the models describing functionality (the problem description). One is a result from the other. Both sometimes are not written down but exists in team-members heads. Both are used for communication. Both should be in sync.

If an analyst can create the "perfect functionality model" than a developer can parse this into the "perfect software", provided he created the "perfect architecture model" to assist this. See my other post on MDA and MBSE.

When developing (parts of) complex software, I always liked doing something akin to "Unit Testing" (plus a custom UI/report) that basically checked the boxes of a Architecture-Model I wanted to adhere to. With near-instant compilation (or hot-reloading) it becomes easier to see a live reflection of the data going through your pipeline live.

A good End-To-End (E2E) test can do the same for a Feature-Model, e.g. using Test Driven Development (TDD) or any derative of this. However todays tooling is still behind on this, compared to tooling developers have for architecture. Only a few solutions exist and those are tech-giant level (IBM) or contained and highly specialized for one business sector / problem domain.