Give the Stakeholders What They Want: Design Peer Reviews the ATAM Style

The Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method ® (ATAM ® ) is used to evaluate the architecture of a software intensive system to determine if it meets the organization's business and mission goals (1). ATAM is typi- cally applied at the end of the architecture design process. Looking at the results of many past ATAM evaluations, it becomes apparent that some mechanism is needed to better guide the architecture design process. Many ATAM evaluations show major issues with the system that could have been avoided with the right design approach.