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the implications with the affected subteams and see if it is
worth commissioning a comparative study to see whether a
simple solution may be good enough to justify the savings
compared to a higher-performance, costlier design.
• For resource-related attributes, we have to deal with
configurations of resources and associated quality attribute
requirements (see Chapter 6).

5.4 Selecting Significant Stakeholders
Earlier chapters have mentioned stakeholders as the sources of
requirements, but for architecturally significant requirements, you
need to think carefully about identifying all of the stakeholders. We
recommend writing a stakeholder analysis document and updating it
from time to time. This document will likely have some frank and
unflattering opinions in it, as stakeholders have different views of
important requirements, so it must not be widely circulated.
A stakeholder is any person whose opinions, needs, or
preferences are likely to be relevant to the success of the project. An
obvious example is the customer: if we want someone to buy the
product, that person’s opinions matter. However, even with this
simple example, it is important to note subtle differences between
the buyer and the primary users. For example, for medical imaging,
the purchasing decisions for million-dollar CT scanners and MRI
devices are often driven by the opinions of a small number of
influential research faculty staff at major teaching hospitals.
However, the primary users of such machines are medical
technicians, who care more about ease of use than the latest technical
advances.
Examples of stakeholders include
• Installer In some fields, such as telecommunications or
manufacturing, installing the software and configuring it to
operate correctly with diverse preexisting equipment
constitute a labor-intensive, mentally challenging task.
Especially in businesses that use indirect sales channels, ease
of installation can have a huge impact on profitability, so
including installers as stakeholders is important.
• Tech support In many businesses, the staff who answer
phone calls from irate customers need good remote diagnostic
tools, as well as easy-to-explain user interfaces.
• Competitor Some stakeholders want to see the project fail!
But things get even more complicated when the same
company is a partner in one part of a business and a competitor
in another.