SPA2005 session: Architectural Evaluation for Fun and Profit! | |||
| One-line description: | A short tutorial to introduce the concept of formalised architectural evaluation and a couple of practical methods that can be used to perform evaluations. | ||
| Session format: | Tutorial [read about the different session types] | ||
| Abstract: | If the wrong architecture is chosen for a software system then everyone suffers. Developers have problems implementing it, systems administrators have problems deploying it, testers can't verify it, users hate using it, acquirers suddenly find other projects to sponsor and everyone blames the architect (not altogether unreasonably, under the circumstances). Therefore it makes sense to try to work out whether a proposed architecture is suitable as early as possible. The problem is that is it quite hard to evaluate a software architecture because the concept of the "right" architecture is difficult to define (varying with every stakeholder who is consulted) and the multi-faceted nature of an architecture makes it difficult to know where to start and how to organise the process. A solution to at least some of these problems is to apply a well defined, stakeholder centric approach to the evaluation process. This tutorial will introduce the idea of formal architectural evaluation, discuss what the attributes of an effective architectural evaluation process are and provide an introduction to two existing methods for architectural evaluation, SAAM and ATAM. | ||
| Audience background: | Users, acquirers and developers of software systems. No prior knowledge of software architecture or architectural evaluation is assumed. | ||
| Benefits of participating: | * An understanding of what architectural evaluation is, where it fits and what it can offer in the software development lifecycle. * An understanding of a generic process that can be used. * Basic knowledge of two specific approachs (SAAM and ATAM) that can be used to perform architectural evaluation. | ||
| Materials provided: | Presentation slides | ||
| Process: | This is intended to be a very straightforward tutorial and is planned to be presentation based, with some interaction via questions and answers. 00:00 - 00:10 - Introductions 00:10 - 00:25 - Presentation: What is architectural evaluation and why should you care? 00:25 - 00:35 - Presentation: What to look for in an architectural evaluation. 00:35 - 00:45 - Presentation: The Software Architecture Assessment Method (SAAM) 00:45 - 01:00 - Presentation: The Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) 01:00 - 01:05 - Presentation: When to use SAAM, when to use ATAM? 01:05 - 01:15 - Summary and conclusions | ||
| Outputs: | * The presentation material. * Questions asked and answers. | ||
| History: | The session is new, but will be based on architectural evaluation material that we have been developing at Zuhlke so the base material is fairly proven. | ||
| Presenters | |||
| 1. Eoin Woods Zuhlke Engineering Ltd |
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