Tradeoff and Sensitivity Analysis in Software Architecture Evaluation Using Analytic Hierarchy Process |
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Authors: | Email author" target="_blank">Liming?ZhuEmail author Aybüke?Aurum Ian?Gorton Ross?Jeffery |
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Affiliation: | (1) School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia;(2) Empirical Software Engineering, National ICT Australia, Australia;(3) School of Information Systems, Technology and Management, University of New South Wales, Australia |
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Abstract: | Software architecture evaluation involves evaluating different architecture design alternatives against multiple quality-attributes.
These attributes typically have intrinsic conflicts and must be considered simultaneously in order to reach a final design
decision. AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process), an important decision making technique, has been leveraged to resolve such conflicts.
AHP can help provide an overall ranking of design alternatives. However it lacks the capability to explicitly identify the
exact tradeoffs being made and the relative size of these tradeoffs. Moreover, the ranking produced can be sensitive such
that the smallest change in intermediate priority weights can alter the final order of design alternatives. In this paper,
we propose several in-depth analysis techniques applicable to AHP to identify critical tradeoffs and sensitive points in the
decision process. We apply our method to an example of a real-world distributed architecture presented in the literature.
The results are promising in that they make important decision consequences explicit in terms of key design tradeoffs and
the architecture's capability to handle future quality attribute changes. These expose critical decisions which are otherwise
too subtle to be detected in standard AHP results.
Liming Zhu is a PHD candidate in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at University of New South Wales. He is also a member
of the Empirical Software Engineering Group at National ICT Australia (NICTA). He obtained his BSc from Dalian University
of Technology in China. After moving to Australia, he obtained his MSc in computer science from University of New South Wales.
His principle research interests include software architecture evaluation and empirical software engineering.
Aybüke Aurum is a senior lecturer at the School of Information Systems, Technology and Management, University of New South Wales. She
received her BSc and MSc in geological engineering, and MEngSc and PhD in computer science. She also works as a visiting researcher
in National ICT, Australia (NICTA). Dr. Aurum is one of the editors of “Managing Software Engineering Knowledge”, “Engineering
and Managing Software Requirements” and “Value-Based Software Engineering” books. Her research interests include management
of software development process, software inspection, requirements engineering, decision making and knowledge management in
software development. She is on the editorial boards of Requirements Engineering Journal and Asian Academy Journal of Management.
Ian Gorton is a Senior Researcher at National ICT Australia. Until Match 2004 he was Chief Architect in Information Sciences and Engineering
at the US Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Previously he has worked at Microsoft and IBM, as
well as in other research positions. His interests include software architectures, particularly those for large-scale, high-performance
information systems that use commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) middleware technologies. He received a PhD in Computer Science
from Sheffield Hallam University.
Dr. Ross Jeffery is Professor of Software Engineering in the School of Computer Science and Engineering at UNSW and Program Leader in Empirical
Software Engineering in National ICT Australia Ltd. (NICTA). His current research interests are in software engineering process
and product modeling and improvement, electronic process guides and software knowledge management, software quality, software
metrics, software technical and management reviews, and software resource modeling and estimation. His research has involved
over fifty government and industry organizations over a period of 15 years and has been funded from industry, government and
universities. He has co-authored four books and over one hundred and twenty research papers. He has served on the editorial
board of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, and the Wiley International Series in Information Systems and he is
Associate Editor of the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering. He is a founding member of the International Software Engineering
Research Network (ISERN). He was elected Fellow of the Australian Computer Society for his contribution to software engineering
research. |
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Keywords: | software architecture architecture evaluation analytic hierarchy process trade-off sensitivity analysis decision making multi-criteria decision making non functional requirements quality attributes |
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