Copyright the authors and QualIT Keywords: System architecture, Architecture-based Analysis, Evaluation Techniques, Soft Systems Theory, Social Issues. The case for understanding social complexity in the architecture-based analysis process

Systems architecture is a discipline that seeks to model the abstract form of a system and reason about the qualities of the end system artefact with respect to the design representation. The analysis need has driven the development of several architecture-based evaluation techniques, which have evolved over the past decade from expert-centric, to stakeholder-centric analysis. The resulting group of participants can be considered, as they are in the broader design process, a human activity system, granting architecture-based analysis many of the attributes of a social or 'soft' process, The following paper examines the development of architecture-based evaluation techniques in light of soft systems theory and makes the case for the existence of, and need to understand, social complexity within the analysis process