Software architecture critics in the Argo design environment

Software architectures are high-level design representations of software systems which focus on composition of software components and how those components interact. Software architectures abstract the details of implementation and allow the designer to focus on essential design decisions. Regardless of notation, designers are faced with the task of making good design decisions which demand a broad range of knowledge of the problem and solution domains. In this paper we describe Argo, a software architecture design environment that supports designers by addressing several cognitive challenges of design. Argo's critiquing infrastructure supports decision making by automatically supplying knowledge that is timely and relevant to decisions at hand. Our discussion centers on a five-phase critiquing process that we use to motivate Argo's features, structure a usage scenario and characterize related work.

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