Work with the team, especially the Stakeholder and Analyst, to describe the remaining goals for the architecture and identify which ones are appropriate to address for this iteration. Examine the product Vision and requirements. These goals will prioritize and guide the approach to important technical decisions.

It will be important to regularly review the status of these goals throughout the project to make sure that they are still valid and that the system is on track to deliver them.

Identify which of the current requirements are architecturally significant. Explore and refine those that must be implemented in order to realize the architectural goals for the current iteration. See Concept: Architecturally Significant Requirements and Guideline: Determine Architecturally Significant Requirements for more information.

Reference the architecturally significant requirements in the Architecture Notebook after they are identified. It will be important to review this list regularly in line with changes to requirements to make sure that they are still valid.

List any constraints on the architecture and any trade-offs between competing requirements and resources. Decide how the architecture will meet these issues. Justify each of the decisions made and capture this information. Regularly review the list of constraints to make sure that they are still valid and that no new ones have appeared.

Identify assets from other areas that may be reused in the current architecture. These could include:

• Architectural frameworks
• Architectural mechanisms
• Architectural decisions
• Constraints
• Applications
• Components
• COTS software 

Capture important decisions about the architecture for future reference. Consider using the templates provided for the Architecture Notebook. Developers in particular should clearly understand the current state of the architecture each iteration before developing the architecture.