Marketecture

Marchitecture (or marketecture) is a portmanteau of the words marketing and architecture. The term is applied to any form of electronic architecture, especially software, perceived to have been produced purely for marketing reasons.^[1]^[2] It may be used by a vendor to place itself in such a way as to promote all their strongest abilities whilst simultaneously masking their weaknesses.

The term marketecture is also used in the context of an abstract description of a complex system, such as a distributed software system, for the purpose of discussion and analysis. In his book Essential Software Architecture, Ian Gorton describes it as

[A marketecture] is one page, typically informal depiction of the system's structure and interactions. It shows the major components, their relationships and has a few well chosen labels and text boxes that portray the design philosophies embodied in the architecture. A marketecture is an excellent vehicle for facilitating discussion by stakeholders during design, build, review, and of course the sales process. It's easy to understand and explain, and serves as a starting point for deeper analysis.^[3]