Incremental architecture refinement

One of the topic we are working on is software architecture evaluation. The incremental architecture evaluation approach was presented at  CEE-SET'09 conference.

The architecture evaluation is one of the method to mitigate the risk of the project failure. When we apply architecture evaluation we can minimize the risk of proposing wrong solution for the set of requirements we have. In addition, we can identify incorrectly defined requirements. As evaluation has a for of the meeting of key stakeholders we are able to reduce the risk of the requirements misunderstanding. This group meeting is also a way to share the knowledge about architecture among stakeholders. Finally, evaluation meeting is a way to assess the acceptance of architect's moves by the other team members.  

There are multiple methods that can be found but probably the most well known and mature is ATAM developed by SEI. The bigest problem we have discovered when trying to adopt this method was that the one-shot solution doesn't work well. Therefore, we have decided to build a method that bases on ATAM but can be embedded into the project development cycle. ADAPT (Attribute Driven Approach to architecture evaluation in Process Techniques) is a set of the building blocks and techniques that can be embeded into the project development methodology. In the presentation the building blocks are discussed in the context of XPrince methodology, however they can be adopted for other too.

The different steps of original method are located in appropriate phases of the development cycle. The method building blocks have a form of formal or informal meetings (depending on the adpoter organization needs). The artifact elaborated buring the meeting are stored in the knowledge repository. For the purpose of the method we have developed the architectural knowledge repository model.

If you would like to know more details about the method they can be found in following presentation (please enable the comments).

You could also look at the paper.