arc42 Solution Strategy and Building Block View
Source identity:
ddx:
id: resource.arc42-solution-strategyarc42 Solution Strategy and Building Block View
Source
- URL: https://docs.arc42.org/section-4/
- URL: https://docs.arc42.org/section-5/
- Accessed: 2026-05-12
Summary
arc42 describes solution strategy as the short explanation of fundamental decisions and approaches that shape an architecture. Its building block view describes the system’s static decomposition into modules, components, subsystems, interfaces, and their relationships. Together, these sections help teams communicate how requirements and constraints translate into structure without documenting code-level detail.
Relevant Findings
- Solution strategy should explain the important choices and why they were made based on requirements, quality goals, and constraints.
- Building block views make decomposition understandable through abstraction.
- Interfaces and relationships between building blocks are part of the design when they are important for understanding the system.
- Useful design documentation stays concise and points to details elsewhere rather than duplicating every lower-level decision.
HELIX Usage
This resource informs the Solution Design artifact. HELIX uses it to keep feature-level designs focused on alternatives, selected approach, decomposition, domain model, interfaces, and traceability to requirements.
Authority Boundary
This resource supports architecture and solution-design documentation. It does not replace HELIX Architecture, ADR, Contract, or Technical Design artifacts, which own different levels of structural authority and implementation detail.