Concern

A concern is an interest that a stakeholder has in a system, relevant to how that system is architected. It may take the form of a requirement, an objective, a constraint, an intention, or simply an aspiration – whatever it is that a stakeholder wants, needs, or expects from the architecture.

Concerns are not limited to functional or technical matters. ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010, the standard that formalizes the term, treats a concern as pertaining to any influence on a system within its environment, including developmental, technological, business, operational, organizational, political, economic, legal, regulatory, ecological, and social influences.

Identifying and reconciling the concerns of different stakeholders – who often want conflicting things from the same system – is a core activity of software architecture.

References

• Rozanski, N, and Woods, E (2011). Software Systems Architecture: Working with Stakeholders Using Viewpoints and Perspectives (2nd ed.), chapter 8. Addison-Wesley.
• ISO/IEC/IEEE (2011). ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010:2011 — Systems and software engineering — Architecture description.