Linking Quality Attributes and Constraints with Architectural Decisions

TL;DR

This paper introduces Quark, a computer-aided method designed to assist software architects in making decisions that align with quality attributes and constraints, addressing the complexity of trade-offs and incompatibilities.

Contribution

The paper presents Quark, a novel tool that supports architects in evaluating and managing quality attributes and constraints during architectural decision making.

Findings

Quark effectively identifies trade-offs between quality attributes.

It helps ensure architectural decisions comply with constraints.

The method improves decision consistency and quality.

Abstract

Quality attributes and constraints are among the main drivers of architectural decision making. The quality attributes are improved or damaged by the architectural decisions, while restrictions directly include or exclude parts of the architecture (for example, the logical components or technologies). We can determine the impact of a decision of architecture in software quality, or which parts of the architecture are affected by a constraint, but the difficult problem is whether we are respecting the quality requirements (requirements on quality attributes) and constraints with all the architectural decisions made. Currently, the common practice is that architects use their own experience to design architectures that meet the quality requirements and restrictions, but at the end, especially for the crucial decisions, the architect has to deal with complex trade-offs between quality attributes and juggle possible incompatibilities raised by the constraints. In this paper we present Quark, a computer-aided method to support architects in software architecture decision making.