Automated Architectural Control: Implementing the Governance as Code

Governance as Code (GaC) is an emerging approach aimed at automating software architectural control within the modern software engineering industry. This article addresses the challenges associated with software architectural control and presents the generalized GaC approach as a solution that enables the transformation of the architectural control process from a theoretical framework into an automated, practical tool for ensuring compliance with engineering and security standards. The implementation of GaC is structured around three key tasks: representing software architecture as a universal formal model, performing reverse engineering to extract software architecture from ready-to-deploy systems, and automating the verification of architectural control rules. For each of these tasks, a solution is provided along with the underlying motivations.