Moving towards quality attribute driven software architecture reconstruction

TL;DR: This paper introduces a quality attribute driven perspective on software architecture reconstruction and presents atechnical reasoning framework and illuminates the information that is required from the reconstruction proceses to link the knowledge gained back to the business goals of an organization.

Abstract: There are many good reasons why organizations shouldperform software architecture reconstructions. However,few organizations are willing to pay for the effort. Softwarearchitecture reconstruction must be viewed not as an efforton its own but as a contribution in a broader technicalcontext, such as the streamlining of products into a productline or the modernization of systems that hit theirarchitectural borders. In these contexts software architectsfrequently need to reason about existing systems, forexample to lower adoption and technical barriers for newtechnology approaches. We propose a Quality AttributeDriven Software Architecture Reconstruction (QADSAR)approach where this kind of reasoning is driven by theanalysis of quality attribute scenarios.This paper introduces a quality attribute driven perspectiveon software architecture reconstruction. It presents atechnical reasoning framework and illuminates theinformation that is required from the reconstruction processto link the knowledge gained back to the business goals ofan organization. The paper illustrates the techniques bypresenting a real-world case study.