Impact Evaluation for Quality-Oriented Architectural Decisions regarding Evolvability

Quality goals have to be under a special consideration during software architectural design. Evolvability constitutes a quality goal with a special relevance for business critical systems. Architectural patterns can significantly contribute to the satisfaction of quality goals. But architectural design decisions regarding these goals have to be made in a systematic, methodical way and concerning the patterns’ influence on quality properties. Unfortunately, pattern catalogs do not well support quality goal-oriented design decisions. This paper presents a systematic refinement and mapping of the quality goal evolvability to properties for good architectural design. A set of architectural patterns is evaluated regarding these properties. Furthermore, a calculation scheme is provided that enables the evaluation of the patterns to support design decisions. The results have been developed, revised, and evaluated in a series of applications based on industrial expertise.