Performing architecture tradeoff analysis

1. ABSTRACT Software architectures, like complex designs in any field, embody trade-offs made by the designers. However, these trade-offs are not always made explicitly by the designers and they may not understand the impacts of their decisions. This paper introduces a scenariobased analysis technique for software architectures-called ATAM-that not only analyzes a software architecture with respect to multiple quality attributes, but explicitly considers the trade-offs inherent in the design.