A role-playing game to teach ATAM (Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method) a simulation tool and case study

Software architecture teaching is particularly hard for undergrad students, as the typically do not have work experience with medium or large software systems that have competing stakeholders. In particular, current software engineering education approaches do not seem useful to teach a method like ATAM (Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method), designed for evaluation of architectural designs by competing stakeholders. This article presents a role playing game (RPG) to support teaching of ATAM to graduate informatics students, in classroom or distance learning by simulating stakeholders interaction. A case study was developed based on the Chilean National System of Tsunami Alarms (SNAM); the material includes case description and an initial proposal for architecture and utility tree, and to enable role-playing, also includes stakeholders´ roles and competing goals,. Students assume some stakeholder role, prioritize and examine quality attributes, negotiate priority and difficulty of scenarios, and agree on a final architecture. The system has been piloted, and will be deployed to a graduate software architecture class in mid-July. Role playing games for software engineering education allow to exercise technically-based negotiation skills, and empirical studies like this one will gather applicability and usefulness information for its nuanced application to future cohorts.