Software Architecture Evaluation Methods for Performance, Maintainability, Testability, and Portability

The software architecture has been identified as an important part of a software system. Further, the software architecture impacts the quality attributes of a system, e.g., performance and maintainability. Therefore, methods for evaluating the quality attributes of software architectures are important. In this paper, we present a survey of software architecture evaluation methods. We focus on methods for evaluating one or several of the quality attributes performance, maintainability, testability, and portability. Based on a literature search and review of 240 articles, we present and compare ten evaluation methods. We have found that most evaluation methods only address one quality attribute, and very few can evaluate several quality attributes simultaneously in the same framework or method. Further, only one of the methods includes trade-off analysis. Therefore, our results suggest an increased research focus on software architecture evaluation methods than can address several quality attributes and the possible trade-offs between different quality attributes.