Software Engineering Institute

The Architecture Centric Virtual Integration Process (ACVIP) is a set of technologies and practices that specifically have been designed and demonstrated to provide early detection and continuous verification throughout the lifecycle. The purpose of the ACVIP is to address the affordability and associated risks of developing complex software intensive systems through early virtual integration and analysis before implementation.
 
A unique contribution of ACVIP and AADL to the Authoritative Source of Truth is the ability to support continuous integration at the architecture design level, complemented with agile development techniques. The component interaction complexity is managed by requiring components to be compliant with an architecture model. Incrementally evolving architecture models are continuously analyzed along multiple functional and non-functional dimensions. Consistency of these analytical models with the evolving system design is maintained by auto-generating them from a common annotated AADL model of an embedded software system. This reduces manual replication and maintenance of information across different models while enabling analysis of cross-domain effects within this integrated architectural model.
 
ACVIP applies across development phases, starting with requirements engineering and going through verification and qualification. Different kinds of information at different levels of detail are used in the different phases. It is important to remember that the fidelity of the analysis is determined by the details in the AADL model.