An important step in designing a high-quality software architecture is for it to go through a review process. Architecture reviews may also be conducted when an organization acquires software or to compare architectures. A review will determine whether the functional requirements and quality attribute scenarios can be satisfied with the software architecture. Reviewing the architecture helps the team find mistakes and correct them as early as possible. This can greatly reduce the amount of effort it takes to fix a defect and can help to avoid further rework.
In this section, we will be taking a look at the following software architecture evaluation methods:
- Software architecture analysis method (SAAM)
- Architecture tradeoff analysis method (ATAM)
- Active design review (ADR)
- Active reviews of intermediate designs (ARID)