Software Engineering Institute

Software architecture is critical to the quality of a software-intensive system. For an acquisition organization, such as the Department of Defense (DoD), the ability to evaluate software architectures as early as possible in an acquisition can have a favorable impact on the delivered system. This technical note explains the role of software architecture evaluation in a source selection and describes the contractual elements that are needed to support its use. The note then briefly describes the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) and provides an example that shows how to apply this method in a source selection. The example includes sample contractual language that an acquirer can adapt to meet specific acquisition needs.