Software provides a means for productive activities of man and industries. Indeed the strength, intelligence and vastness of the use of computer lie on the software. Sequel to the above, this paper discusses the component- based system development life cycle, reusability and identifies the acquisition and elicitation of requirements in combination with COTS selection as a multi- criteria decisions process which possess great problem. It suggests the use of cyclic life cycle paradigm as a solution to this great problem. The paper compares Component- Based Development cycle with the Cyclic Life Cycle model, and software architecture with component- Based Development and concludes that the component- Based approach and architectural design play vital role in product configuration management. Finally, it compares Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Component- Based systems modeling. The UML can be used for both component and system modeling while the Component- Based design should best concentrate on interface definitions and collaboration between the components through the interfaces. Finally using an appropriate diagram, the paper presents the various aspects of Component- Based Architecture which include conceptual architecture, implementation architecture and deployment architecture.