Adaptation of ATAMSM to software architectural design practices for organically growing small software companies

The architecture of a software application determines the degree of success of both operation and development of software. Adopted architectural options not only affect the functionality and performance of the software, but they also affect delivery related factors such as cost, time, changeability, scalability, and maintainability. It is thus very important to find appropriate means of assessing benefits as well as liabilities of different architectural options to maximize the life-time benefit and reduce the overall cost of ownership of a software application. The Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM^SM) developed by Software Engineering Institute (SEI) is that kind of tool. Considerably this is a very big framework for dealing with architectural tradeoff issues faced by large companies for developing large as well as complex software applications. The practicing of full blown ATAM without taking into consideration of diverse forces affecting the value addition from its practice does not maximize benefits from its adoption. Related forces faced by small software companies are significantly different than those faced by large software companies. Therefore, ATAM should be adapted to make it suitable for the practice by small software companies. This paper presents the information about the architectural practice level of organically grown small software companies within the context of ATAM followed by the gap analysis between the industry practices and ATAM, and adaptation recommendations. Both literature review and field investigation based on key informant interview have been performed for this purpose. Based on the findings of this study an adaptation process of ATAM for the small companies has been proposed.