Software Engineering Institute

Many organizations have successfully applied the Software Engineering Institute's Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method® (ATAM) to evaluate software architectures relative to the achievement of system quality attributes. While the benefits of the method are widely recognized, there has been less guidance about how to systematically use the evaluation results to improve the architecture. In this presentation, we describe the Architecture Improvement Workshop (AIW), which answers the "Now what do I do?" question that naturally arises after the evaluation. We describe the steps of the method, outline the information collection techniques used, and report on some of the benefits achieved during pilot use. We will describe progress made in an engagement with the U.S. Air Force, using the AIW to support the evolution of the Space Surveillance Network Analysis Model (SSNAM) system. We will also describe an extension to the method: the Extended Evolutionary Architecture Improvement Workshop (E2AIW).