Decision-Centric Architecture Reviews

Abstract

0 7 4 0 -7 4 5 9 / 1 4 / $ 3 1 . 0 0 © 2 0 1 4 I E E E J a n u a r y / F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 4 | // Architecture evaluation is an important activity in the software engineering life cycle, but unfortunately, it isn't regularly practiced in industry. Decision-centric architecture reviews uncover and evaluate the rationale behind the most important architecture decisions.Experiences in large industrial projects have shown that full-scale DCAR evaluations, including reporting, can be conducted in fewer than five person-days while still producing satisfying results for stakeholders. //

Athena: Towards Decision-Centric Anticipatory Sensor Information Delivery

“…A significant amount work on decision-centric management revolves around managing software architecture decisions [8][9][10], product design [11], business processes [12], business intelligence [13] and physical organizations [14] (including human resources and financial assets). In contrast, we are the first to focus on decision-driven management of runtime communication and scheduling in networks that deliver sensory information.…”

“…They refer to human-centric processes that empower decision-makers, as opposed to runtime algorithms such as communication protocols and scheduling policies in computing machines. A category that comes closer to computer science in this context is the category of managing software architecture design [8][9][10]. Architectural decisions affect software performance outcomes.…”

“…Architectural decisions affect software performance outcomes. Hence, much work is focused on understanding the dependencies between decisions and outcomes, offering tools to enable decisions that lead to improved outcomes, such as improved performance [10], improved security threat mitigation [15,16] and improved defense [17]. For example, decision-driven architecture reviews [10] offer opportunities to assess the suitability of architectural decisions to design purposes early on the development cycle.…”

“…Hence, much work is focused on understanding the dependencies between decisions and outcomes, offering tools to enable decisions that lead to improved outcomes, such as improved performance [10], improved security threat mitigation [15,16] and improved defense [17]. For example, decision-driven architecture reviews [10] offer opportunities to assess the suitability of architectural decisions to design purposes early on the development cycle. Tools for decision-driven business performance management [18] document the relation between performance metrics on the one hand and decisions/sub-decisions on the other, allowing one to explore the decision space by modifying decisions and tracking their impact on performance metrics.…”

Reference architectures: factors for their sustainability

“…At the end of multiple iterations, which consist of acceptance or disapproval of candidate solutions, validated architecture is expected as result (HOFMEISTER et al, 2005). Some approaches to evaluate software architectures were proposed (KAZMAN; CLEMENTS, 2000;Kazman, R. and Asundi, J. and Klein, M., 2001;HEESCH et al, 2014). (BOSCH, 2000) identified four main groups for these evaluation approaches: (i) experiencebased methods that are based on previous experience and domain knowledge of the evaluation team; (ii) simulation-based methods that typically rely on a high level implementation of the software architecture; (iii) mathematical modeling methods that use mathematical proofs to evaluate operational quality requirements, such as performance and reliability; and (iv) scenariobased methods that evaluate a particular quality attribute by creating scenario profiles.…”