An Inquiry Tool for Stakeholder Concerns of Architectural Viewpoints: a Case Study at a Large Financial Service Provider

IEEE Std 1471 defines architectural views as addressing related stakeholder concerns, but gives no guidance as to what architectural concerns are or how they should be found. In this paper we present an inquiry tool to solicit IEEE Std 1471 stakeholder concerns. The tool is a list of interview questions which help a stakeholder to express his concerns. The tool helps the enterprise architect to be aware of which architectural concerns are relevant in a given situation. We demonstrate the use of this tool in a case study at a Dutch bank, where an architecture documentation practice is evaluated and three stakeholder concerns are uncovered that are not yet addressed.