What builds up the architectural runway?

• A. Business features
• B. Nonfunctional requirements
• C. Architectural features
• D. Regulatory requirements

Answer: (C)

The architectural runway is the technical foundation that supports future development, including the necessary code, components, and infrastructure. It’s extended by work that directly improves the architecture and infrastructure, namely architectural features. These items address architectural concerns, implement patterns, refactors, and infrastructure improvements, and ensure the system can scale and adapt as new capabilities are added. That makes architectural features the mechanism that builds up the runway.

Business features deliver customer-visible capabilities and ride on top of the runway; they don’t by themselves extend the underlying architecture. Nonfunctional requirements and regulatory needs matter, guiding what the architecture must achieve, but the actual work that grows the runway comes from architectural work, especially architectural features.