The need to address system architecture within the computer systems development process is well accepted. Despite this, the process of architecting is still not well understood. In this paper we discuss the need for an architecting process which goes beyond specific architecting methods in order to address issues such as architecture evaluation and tailoring of architectures to specific system requirements. Based on these needs we propose an architecting process which selects from existing methods, bases and performance indices to produce a verifiable architecture. This process provides a framework within which we can develop an architecture which has the maximum (measurable) likelihood of satisfying both functional and nonfunctional system requirements upon implementation.