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  • Book
  • © 2016

Pragmatic Evaluation of Software Architectures

  • Presents the lessons learned from more than 75 architecture evaluation projects with industrial customers
  • Provides comprehensive answers to more than 100 typical questions and discusses more than 60 frequent mistakes and lessons learned
  • Written in a style accessible to both professionals and researchers and offers a balance of quantitative measurement and qualitative expertise
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

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Table of contents (14 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxiii
  2. What Is the Point of Architecture Evaluation?

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
    2. Why Architecture Evaluation?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 3-10
    3. What Is the Background of Architecture?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 11-20
    4. What Is Architecture Evaluation?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 21-34
    5. How to Perform an Architecture Evaluation?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 35-45
  3. How to Evaluate Architectures Effectively and Efficiently?

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 47-47
    2. How to Perform the Driver Integrity Check (DIC)?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 49-58
    3. How to Perform the Solution Adequacy Check (SAC)?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 59-72
    4. How to Perform the Documentation Quality Check (DQC)?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 73-82
    5. How to Perform the Architecture Compliance Check (ACC)?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 83-94
    6. How to Perform the Code Quality Check (CQC)?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 95-104
  4. How to Apply Architecture Evaluation in Practice?

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 105-105
    2. What Are Example Cases of Architecture Evaluation?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 107-125
    3. How to Engage Management in Architecture Evaluation?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 127-136
    4. How to Acquire Architecture Evaluation Skills?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 137-140
    5. How to Start and Institutionalize Architecture Evaluation?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 141-146
    6. What Are the Key Takeaways of Architecture Evaluation?

      • Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab
      Pages 147-148
  5. Back Matter

    Pages 149-154

About this book

Thorough and continuous architecting is the key to overall success in software engineering, and architecture evaluation is a crucial part of it. This book presents a pragmatic architecture evaluation approach and insights gained from its application in more than 75 projects with industrial customers in the past decade. It presents context factors, empirical data, and example cases, as well as lessons learned on mitigating the risk of change through architecture evaluation.

By providing comprehensive answers to more than 100 typical questions and discussing more than 60 frequent mistakes and lessons learned, the book allows readers to not only learn how to conduct architecture evaluations and interpret its results, but also to become aware of risks such as false conclusions, manipulating data, and unsound lines of argument. It equips readers to become confident in assessing quantitative measurement results and recognize when it is better to rely on qualitative expertise.

The target readership includes both practitioners and researchers. By demonstrating its impact and providing clear guidelines, data, and examples, it encourages practitioners to conduct architecture evaluations. At the same time, it offers researchers insights into industrial architecture evaluations, which serve as the basis for guiding research in this area and will inspire future research directions.

Reviews

“The focus of this well-organized guidebook is the evaluation of software architectures. It presents practical experience- and context-based guidance for software architecture evaluations. … it is of value to software engineers, software architects, designers, managers, and software evaluators. … this book contributes to our understanding of software architecture via guidance for the pragmatic evaluation of software architecting and supports software architecture’s central role in the development, maintenance, and improvement of software.” (J. M. Perry, Computing Reviews, November, 2016)


“This book starts off nicely, with a rather unusually structured table of contents, which brings out the character of a book written by practitioners for practitioners. The style of the language is casual and entertaining, sometimes even a little sarcastic ("Bermuda Triangle", "patient dies on the way to the hospital",...), which I like a lot. In terms of content, the most pressing issues regarding this subject are answered. All in all, a good overview is provided. I really enjoyed reading this book.” (Stefan Georg, IT Architect, Cosmos Finanzservice GmbH, Saarbruecken, Germany)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Fraunhofer IESE, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Jens Knodel, Matthias Naab

About the authors

Jens Knodel is senior architect and consultant at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE) in Kaiserslautern, Germany. He is responsible for project management, software and system architecture design, and smart ecosystems in research and industry projects. He shares his experience about software engineering at international conferences and journal publications, in scientific publications and is a lecturer for software architecture at the Fraunhofer Academy, the Technical University of Kaiserslautern, and the Hochschule Mannheim.

Matthias Naab is head of the Architecture-Centric Engineering department at Fraunhofer IESE and a lecturer for software architecture at the Fraunhofer Academy. He led and conducted dozens of architecture evaluations for customers from many industries, helping customers to make adequate decisions around their software systems. He shares his experience about architecture evaluation at practitioner conferences and in scientific publications.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 79.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 99.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access