Use of the CBAM (Cost Benefit Analysis Method) to complete the ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method) for architecture design

Abstract

The ATAM helps a system``s stakeholders understand the consequences of architectural decisions with respect to the system``s quality attribute requirements and business goals. It helps stakeholders determine where the risks and tradeoffs exist in elicited architectural strategies with rather low investment. However, because the ATAM doesn``t provide any guidance for understanding economic benefits, it needs to be complemented by another quantitative approach such as CBAM (Cost Benefit Analysis Method) to permit deterministic reasoning in making architectural decisions. The CBAM helps software architects consider the return on investment of any architectural decision and provides guidance on the economic tradeoffs involved. Its purpose is to give an economic framework within which the stakeholders can make a rational architectural decision, through the elicitation and documentation of the costs, benefits, and uncertainty for their architectural investments. In this dissertation, the ATAM process we conducted in our studio project was analyzed to evaluate flow we properly adjusted it to our project situation and to analyze what we did well and what could have done better. The analysis shows that if the ATAM process can be properly adjusted, the ATAM can give its own benefit to a small case like a studio project that has limited resources in terms of time and workforce, as well as to a large project. The analysis here will help us to adapt the ATAM more effectively in the future and guide beginners to maximize the benefit of their first ATAM evaluation. In addition, the CBAM evaluation for PMCenter system was conducted on the outputs of the ATAM in the studio project. The goals of this evaluation are primarily to experience the CBAM process itself and to justify our decision of .Net over J2EE for the architecture framework in out studio project. Though the evaluation was performed with several restrictions and assumptions, the whole experience showed how the...