A survey on software architecture analysis methods

The purpose of the architecture evaluation of a software system is to analyze the architecture to identify potential risks and to verify that the quality requirements have been addressed in the design. This survey shows the state of the research at this moment, in this domain, by presenting and discussing eight of the most representative architecture analysis methods. The selection of the studied methods tries to cover as many particular views of objective reflections as possible to be derived from the general goal. The role of the discussion is to offer guidelines related to the use of the most suitable method for an architecture assessment process. We will concentrate on discovering similarities and differences between these eight available methods by making classifications, comparisons and appropriateness studies.