Information System Architecture Evaluation: From Software to Enterprise Level Approaches

In order to ensure that technology supports business needs and that IT investments deliver the desired value, it is fundamental to define an Information System Architecture (ISA) and measure its accurateness to the business model and existing technologies. Thus, in this paper we are concern on evaluating ISA by measuring its qualities (relevant at enterprise level). Since software architecture (SA) is part of the information system architecture and the evaluation topic is a quite mature issue on the software engineering domain, we enumerate and classify several software evaluation approaches in order to consider its applicability to ISA evaluation. Therefore, in this paper, we present and classify the most significant software evaluation issues, namely: software qualities, software evaluation approaches, and software metrics. Our preliminary findings indicate that: the quality attributes relevant for SA evaluation are generally applicable for ISA evaluation, the SA evaluation approaches are also useful for ISA evaluation, and the SA metrics are not applicable to ISA evaluation. In this paper we propose a set of metrics for ISA evaluation, considering the most experienced and tested software engineering metrics. We apply the ISA evaluation approach, qualities and metrics to a health-care project case study. Key-words: Evaluation, Metrics, Information System Architecture (ISA), Enterprise Architecture, Software Architecture (SA), CEO Framework, Health-care ISA