The software analysis and evaluating becomes a well-established practice inside the architecting of the software systems. The development effort, the time and costs of complex systems are considerably high. In order to assess system's quality against the requirements of its customers, the architects and the developers need methods and tools to support them during the evaluation process. Different research groups have taken such initiatives and are proposing various methods for software architecture quality evaluation.
The software economics contribute to our understanding of how software adds value to products and services. In a typical economic model, specific IT costs are measured against their potential financial value, risk and business impact, so budgets can be allocated to the areas with the highest potential returns. This includes the following points: |
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| Evaluate return on prior software investments
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| Identify the system strengths and weakness of the current software portfolio | | Prioritize software investment decisions
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| Decide when to overhaul or scrap software system
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| Now let us come to some the industry standard methodologies that enable these potential goals. The methods are the initiatives of organizations like Carnegie Mellon Institute, Merrill Lynch, etc. |
Various Methods
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Recently a number of new scenario-based software architecture evaluation methods have been developed by different academic groups and published in form of books or doctorial dissertation theses. Even though the latest methods were using the previous ones, there was not been yet much effort towards an evaluation of their relative merits. The international working group on Software Architecture Review and Assessment (SARA) has taken a review with all existing evaluation methods. There is given the set of methods currently available and supporting the analysis of software architecture quality attributes:
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| SAAM - Software Architecture Analysis Method
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| ATAM - Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method
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| CBAM - Cost Benefit Analysis Method
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| ALMA - Architecture Level Modifiability Analysis
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| FAAM - Family - Architecture Analysis Method
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