One of the most important things an architect can do is reflection. That is, examine systems, organizations, people and ask “What alternatives were considered and why was that particular decision made?” Thinking about the response gives an architect insight into the motivations and decision processes that others have used and this, in turn, should help the architect make better decisions in the future. A pre-requisite for doing this type of reflection is that the decisions and alternatives are made explicit. One venue that gives an architect an opportunity to do this type of reflection is during an architectural evaluation.Another venue is from a book such as this. This book lays out the design process used in building a collection of multi-agent systems.

In addition to providing a case study of a design process and the rationale for the design decisions, the topic of the book also is of great interest. Systems of the future will increasingly have the characteristics of the autonomous systems described here: they are simultaneously becoming more interconnected and more autonomous. Think of your smart phone that is mostly connected but can operate many functions while it is disconnected. These systems of the future will also increasingly operate without central control. Again, the telephone system and how cellular communication is managed provides a good example of this phenomenon.

Problems of connectivity raise issues of a node discovering that it is disconnected, other nodes discovering that a particular node is disconnected, how the node operates while it is disconnected, and reconnecting the node. The case study provides solutions to this problem in the context of autonomous vehicles within a limited geographic area. The essence of the solution provided—define the concept of a neighborhood for a node and treat neighboring nodes in a different fashion from other nodes—seems like it is more general than the particular application in the case study but that is still to be determined.