Architecture Analysis Methods

Abstract

AbstractArchitecture as a discipline is gaining prominence in dealing with the size, sophistication, and complexity of human‐made entities. Organizations evaluate architectures to determine: fitness for purpose; presence or absence of characteristics; satisfaction of requirements; goodness, completeness, and consistency; effectiveness and suitability; coping with change; stakeholder concerns are addressed adequately and so on. Organizations find it difficult to evaluate architectures as there are few publicly known architecture analysis methods, most of the methods are proprietary, architecture descriptions use different terminologies, architecture/system characteristics are wide and varying in nature and there is considerable manual skill and effort involved. In this paper, a few architecture analysis methods that can be codified and used to evaluate a wide variety of architectures across different domains are presented. Further, the efficacy of these analysis methods is illustrated with appropriate examples.