The Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method.

Abstract

This paper presents the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM), a structured technique for understanding the tradeoffs inherent in the architectures of software-intensive systems. This method was developed to provide a principled way to evaluate a software architecture's fitness with respect to multiple competing quality attributes: modifiability, security, performance, availability, and so forth. These attributes interact, and improving one often comes at the price of worsening one or more of the others. The method helps us reason about architectural decisions that affect quality attribute interactions. The ATAM is a spiral model of design, one of postulating candidate architectures followed by analysis and risk mitigation that lead to refined architectures.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 01, 1998
Accession Number
ADA350761

Entities

People

  • Howard Lipson
  • Mario Barbacci
  • Mark Klein
  • Rick Kazman
  • Tom Longstaff

Organizations

  • Carnegie Mellon University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Cyber
  • Human Systems

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Availability
  • Commerce
  • Computing System Architectures
  • Department Of Defense
  • Employment
  • Engineering
  • Governments
  • Homosexuality
  • Intrusion Detection
  • Markov Models
  • Operating Systems
  • Power Supplies
  • Reliability
  • Security
  • Software Design
  • Software Development
  • Spiral Development

Fields of Study

  • Computer science
  • Engineering

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Software Engineering.