Generalizing a Model of Software Architecture Design from Five Industrial Approaches

We compare five industrial software architecture design methods and we extract from their commonalities a general software architecture design approach. Using this general approach, we compare across the five methods the artifacts and activities they use or recommend, and we pinpoint similarities and differences. Once we get beyond the great variance in terminology and description, we find that the 5 approaches have a lot in common and match more or less the "ideal" pattern we introduced.