Praise for Evaluating Software Architectures The architecture of complex software or systems is a collection of hard decisions that are very expensive to change. Successful product development and evolution depend on making the right architectural choices. Can you afford not to identify and not to evaluate these choices? The authors of this book are experts in software architecture and its evaluation. They collected a wealth of ideas and experience in a well-organized and accessible form. If you are involved in the development of complex systems or software, you will find this book an invaluable guide for establishing and improving architecture evaluation practice in your organization. - Alexander Ran, Principal Scientist of Software Architecture, Nokia Software engineers must own this book. It is a well-written guide to the steps for evaluating software architecture. It argues for the inclusion of architecture evaluation and review as a standard part of the software development lifecycle. It introduces some new and innovative methods for analyzing important architecture characteristics, like extensibility, portability, and reliability. I believe these methods will become new engineering cornerstones for creating good software systems. - Joe Maranzano, AT&T Bell Labs Fellow in Software Architecture (1990), and former head of the Bell Labs Software Technology Center Experience and teamwork are the only approaches I know of to deliver products faster, cheaper, and yet to delight your customers. In their first book, Software Architecture in Practice, Paul and Rick (and Len Bass) helped me match my experience with theory. Their invaluable approaches and case studies changed my practice and the way I proceed to design systems and software architectures. This second book, with Mark, covers what I will look at before I feel good about an architecture. It is about how I can tap other people’s experience to produce an improved outcome, using other people’s feedback. I have used many of the concepts explained in this book for my customers’ benefit. Using this book, you - architects, developers, and managers - will develop a common language and practice to team up and deliver more successful products.
- Bertrand Salle, lead architect with a major telecommunications company If architecture is the foundation of system construction, architectural evaluation is part of the foundation of getting to a ‘good’ architecture. In this book, the authors put their considerable expertise to one of the most pressing issues in systems development today: how to evaluate an architecture prior to system construction to ascertain its feasibility and suitability to the system of interest. The book provides a practical guide to architecture evaluation using three contemporary evaluation methods. It should prove valuable to practitioners and as a basis for the evolution of architectural evaluation as an engineering practice. - Rich Hilliard, Chief Technical Officer, ConsentCache, Inc., and technical editor, IEEE Recommended Practice for Architectural Description of Software-Intensive Systems Too many systems have performance and other problems caused by an inappropriate architecture. Thus problems are introduced early, but are usually detected too late - when the deadline is near or, even worse, after the problem makes the headlines. Remedies lead to missed schedules, cost overruns, missed market windows, damaged customer relations, and many other difficulties. It is easy to prevent these problems by evaluating the architecture choices early, and selecting an appropriate one. - Connie U. Smith, Ph.D., principal consultant, Performance Engineering Services Division, L&S Computer Technology, Inc., and coauthor of the new book, Performance Solutions: A Practical Guide to Creating Responsive, Scalable Software The ATAM an evaluation method described in this book is the natural quality-gate through which a high-level design should pass before a detail design project is initiated. Why use the ATAM to evaluate an architecture? Mitigation of design risk is a major reason, but more importantly, the ATAM provides an interactive vehicle that can give key development and user stakeholders architectural visibility - visibility that can lead to an important ‘early buy-in.’ - Rich Zebrowski, Software Technology Manager, Motorola, Inc. Caterpillar’s experience with architecture reviews includes SAAM, ATAM, ARID, and ADR evaluation methods described in this book, the first three in detail. These reviews ensured that the needs of the user community were being met, and they exposed the architecture to others in the organization helping with understanding and organizational buy-in. The SAAM- and ATAM-based evaluations worked well to expose the archi