ATAM 101

When our company was acquired, tech folks from the holding company insisted we use their framework and architecture for all our future initiatives. This left little bit sour mouth and we wanted to compare, contrast and present merits and downsides of such approach. Architectural tradeoff analysis method (ATAM) came to our rescue in capturing architecture from software quality attributes standpoint. Here are some basics to anyone who intend to put this to use,

Step 1. Present the ATAM

Step 2. Present the business drivers

Step 3. Present the architecture

Step 4. Identify Architectural approaches

Step 5. Generate Quality Attribute utility tree

Step 6. Analyze Architectural approaches


Purpose:

The purpose of the ATAM is to assess the consequences of architectural decision alternatives in light of quality attributes. Choosing and designing an architecture that satisfies functional as well as quality attribute requirements (e.g., availability, security, and performance) is vital to the success of the system.

# risks: alternatives that might create future problems in some quality attribute

# sensitivity points: alternatives for which a slight change makes a significant difference in a quality attribute

# tradeoffs: decisions affecting more than one quality attribute

The ATAM is intended to analyze an architecture with respect to its quality attributes, not its functional correctness. Output from this process are


- Business Drivers:

- Architecture drivers - performance, high availability, time to market (modifiability), or high security.

- Constraints -
Business:
Technical:

More details can be found in http://www.sei.cmu.edu/pub/documents/07.reports/07tr015.pdf