Measuring the quality of an Architecture

**Migrated content from old blog http://enterprisewire.wordpress.com/ (Posted on December 18, 2007)

One of common mistakes we tend to do is failure in properly defining non functional requirements. In most cases, architecture and design of the system is defined without having proper non functional requirements in place. Even there is one, its not defined based on the actual needs of the application. So there are chances that we may hit the bottlenecks once the application is deployed. At that time, very common approach is to go in for refactoring of the code if the client allows or we have tendency of putting hacks in code to overcome the constraints. Its better to define process around the validating the quality of the architecture. Let me briefly define a process

• Reviewer should identify and bring in all stakeholders including Architect, Business Users to the review meeting.
• Business Users should describe their use cases. During this time, the audience can also raise queries around requirements which will also help in bringing out the NFR.
• Then review team has to clearly articulate the non functional requirements.
• Once this process is over, Architect should present his architecture to the audience and should describe the architectural patterns used to address those NFRs.
• If Architect failed to address any one of the NFR, then it should be considered as GAP and should be addressed.

There are many architectural evaluation process out there. I would recommend Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM).