Architectural design to meet stakeholder requirements

Architectural design occupies a pivotal position in software engineering. It is during architectural design that crucial requirements such as performance, reliability, costs, etc., must be addressed. Yet the task of achieving these properties remains a difficult one and it is made even more difficult with the shift in software engineering paradigm from monolithic, stand-alone, built-from-scratch systems to componentized, evolvable, standards-based, and product line oriented systems. Many well-established design strategies need to be reconsidered as new requirements such as evolvability, reusability, time-to-market, etc., become more important. This paper outlines an approach that formulates architectural properties such as modifiability and performance as "softgoals" which are incrementally refined. Tradeoffs are made as conflicts and synergies are discovered. Architectural decisions are traced to stakeholders and their dependency relationships. Knowledge-based tool support for the process would provide guidance during design as well as records of design rationales to facilitate understanding and change management.