An Ontology for Architectural Evaluation - Case Study: Collaboration Systems

Barbacci et al. (1995) state that the development of systematic ways to relate the quality attributes of a system to its architecture, it constitutes the basis for making objective decisions on design agreements, and helps engineers do reasonably accurate predictions as to the system attributes, free of prejudice and nontrivial assumptions. The aim is being able to evaluate architecture quantitatively to reach agreements among multiple quality attributes and thus globally attain a better system. However, the elements required to incorporate this evaluation into different types of development models, are not clear. This paper proposes an ontology to conceptualize the issues inherent to architectural evaluation within a development process, which will help identify the scope of the evaluation, as well as the issues to be guaranteed to achieve effectiveness within different development processes, both agile and rigorous. The main conclusion of the research allowed us to identify the interaction elements between the development process and an architectural evaluation method, establishing the starting and end points as well as the inputs required for the incorporation into different kinds of processes. This interaction was validated through a case study, a Collaboration Systems Development Methodology.