May the force be with you

Sometimes it is getting confusing. There are so many influential factors driving software architecture. Here is my small domain language

• Forces is the set of all influential factors an architect is facing: requirements, risks, constraints, business needs.
• Requirements are the (documented) set of all expectations for a software system. According to Wikipedia a requirement represents a necessary attribute, capability, characteristic, or quality of a system in order for it to have value and utility to a user.
• System requirements address the system as a whole. From system requirements we need to derive architecturally relevant requirements that drive architecture and design. That is the architect's job.
  
• A Functional requirement defines functionality a system is supposed to provide, sometimes also known as capability. Use cases are functional requirements. They define what the user expects from the system on a black-box level. User stories according to Wikipedia denote software system requirements formulated as one or two sentences in the everyday or business language of the user.
• A Non-functional requirement (also known as quality requirement, quality attribute or "ility") is constraining a solution. There are two subcategories here: operational requirements as the name suggests constrain the runtime behavior of the system (e.g., security, performance) while developmental requirements constrain the design from a developmental perspective (e.g., maintainability, modifiability). As operational requirements often have a systemic approach to a system they are subject to architecture design and therefore are also called strategic requirements. Tactical requirements such as modifiability mostly have only local scope.
• Constraints - what a surprise - are constraining the solution. A constraint might be technical (we need to use Windows 7 as our OS), organizational (subsystem A should be developed at location A), standard & law (we must abilde to FDA rules), business-related (target costs should not exceed xxx$).

It is the job of a software architect to base all decisions on the forces of the project. Still she/he has sufficient freedom to make architecture and design a complex task. Architecture is about communication and courage to decide.