Making well-informed software design decisions

Arman Shahbazian, Youn Kyu Lee, Yuriy Brun, Nenad Medvidovic

Abstract: Design decisions software architects make directly impact system quality. Real-world systems involve a large number of such decisions, and each decision is typically influenced by others and involves trade-offs in system properties. This paper poses the problem of making complex, interacting design decision relatively early in the project's lifecycle and outlines a search-based and simulation-based approach for helping architects make these decisions and understand their effects.