Scenario-based software architecture reengineering

A method for reengineering software architectures is presented in this paper. The method explicitly addresses the quality attributes of the software architecture. Assessment of quality attributes is performed primarily through the use of scenarios. Design transformations are used to improve quality attributes that do not satisfy the requirements. Assessment and design transformation can be performed for several iterations until all requirements are met. To illustrate the method, the reengi-neering of a prototypical measurement system into a domain-specific software architecture is used as an example. 1 INTRODUCTION Reengineering of a software system is generally initiated by a major change in the requirements the system should fulfil. These change are often concerned with the non-functional rather than the functional requirements. For example, due to architecture erosion [17], the maintainability of the software system may have deteriorated and to improve this, the system is reengineered.