Modeling customer-centric value of system architecture investments

Abstract

System architecture investments aim at improving the quality of the system in alignment with (current and future) business goals. While the costs of architecture changes are routinely calculated, identifying benefits of architecture changes and translating them to a monetary value has been a challenge in practice. Currently, architecture value estimation is largely based on cost-savings or on risk mitigation, without much reliance on potential customer benefits. This article reports on our experience in modeling the customer value and evaluating its potential use in choosing between different system architectures in two case studies conducted in an organization developing healthcare systems. To model the customer value, we exploit best practices in management and marketing. Management tools, in particular strategy maps and balanced scorecards, are used to identify customer-centric benefits caused by architecture design decisions. Furthermore, two marketing concepts, customer value-in-use and customer segments, are adopted to quantify the value of architecture changes for a single customer and multiple customers, respectively. The paper shows that using the customer value in addition to the existing value indicators in the organization has several advantages but also calls for future improvements to be adopted in practice.