The software architecture of a system is the set of structures needed to reason about the system, which comprise software elements, relations among them, and properties of both.^[1] The term also refers to documentation of a system's "software architecture." Documenting software architecture facilitates communication between stakeholders, documents early decisions about high-level design, and allows reuse of design components and patterns between projects.

Architecture description languages

^{Architecture description languages (ADLs)}

^{are used to describe a software architecture. Several different ADLs have been developed by different organizations, including}

• ^{AADL (SAE standard),}
• ^{Wright (developed by Carnegie Mellon),}
• ^{Acme (developed by Carnegie Mellon),}
• ^{xADL (developed by UCI),}
• ^{Darwin (developed by Imperial College London),}
• ^{DAOP-ADL (developed by University of Málaga),}
• ^{and ByADL (University of L'Aquila, Italy).}
• ^{Common elements of an ADL}