We compare five industrial software architecture design methods and we extract from their commonalities a general software architecture design approach. Using this general approach, we compare across the five methods the artifacts and activities they use or recommend, and we pinpoint similarities and differences. Once we get beyond the great variance in terminology and description, we find that the five approaches have a lot in common and match more or less the ''ideal'' pattern we introduced. From the ideal pattern we derive an evaluation grid that can be used for further method comparisons.
['Christine Hofmeister', 'Philippe Kruchten', 'Robert L. Nord', 'J. Henk Obbink', 'Alexander Ran', 'Pierre America']
A general model of software architecture design derived from five industrial approaches