One of the most time-consuming activities and difficult tasks in systems development is the design phase. Depending on the system, there are many design decisions that must be made. Poor decisions during design can cause catastrophic failure of the project. As a member of your software development group, you have been asked to select the system architecture required for the self-service benefits application that is currently under development by the software group in the next room.

Based on your knowledge, experience, and ideas, discuss the following:

• Describe how you would proceed through the process of selecting an appropriate architecture. Address the following questions:
  • What steps are involved in the architecture selection?
  • Describe 1 architecture and what type of software system it would be used for.
  • What advantages does this architecture have over others?