What are the benefits of system architecture evaluation methods?

2 Enhance communication and collaboration

Another benefit of system architecture evaluation methods is that they can enhance communication and collaboration among your system stakeholders. System architecture evaluation methods can help you elicit, document, and validate the requirements, expectations, and assumptions of your system users, customers, developers, testers, managers, and other parties involved in your system project. They can also help you communicate your system design decisions, rationale, and trade-offs to your system stakeholders, and solicit their feedback and input. System architecture evaluation methods can foster a common understanding and vision of your system architecture among your system stakeholders, and promote a culture of quality and improvement.

3 Support decision making and learning

A third benefit of system architecture evaluation methods is that they can support decision making and learning in your systems management practice. System architecture evaluation methods can help you compare and contrast different system design alternatives, and evaluate their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. They can also help you identify and prioritize the most critical and influential factors, criteria, and metrics that affect your system architecture quality and performance. System architecture evaluation methods can help you learn from your system architecture evaluation results, and apply the lessons learned to improve your system design or to address new or changing requirements or challenges.

4 Examples of system architecture evaluation methods

There are various system architecture evaluation methods that you can use to assess your system design, depending on your context, goals, and constraints. The Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM) helps you evaluate the trade-offs among different quality attributes and identify the risks and sensitivities associated with your system design decisions. The Scenario-based Architecture Analysis Method (SAAM) evaluates how well your system architecture supports a set of predefined scenarios. The Software Architecture Analysis Method (SAAM) evaluates the modifiability, portability, and integrability of your system architecture. The Architecture-Level Modifiability Analysis (ALMA) assesses the modifiability of your system architecture and estimates the cost and complexity of implementing change requests. Finally, the Cost-Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM) evaluates the costs and benefits of different system design alternatives and ranks them according to their expected value and return on investment.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?