A framework for classifying and comparing software architecture evaluation methods

Software architecture evaluation has been proposed as a means to achieve quality attributes such as maintainability and reliability in a system. The objective of the evaluation is to assess whether or not the architecture lead to the desired quality attributes. Recently, there have been a number of evaluation methods proposed. There is, however, little consensus on the technical and nontechnical issues that a method should comprehensively address and which of the existing methods is most suitable for a particular issue. We present a set of commonly known but informally described features of an evaluation method and organizes them within a framework that should offer guidance on the choice of the most appropriate method for an evaluation exercise. We use this framework to characterise eight SA evaluation methods.