Software Quality Attributes
Mario R. Barbacci (1)
e-mails: mrb@andrew.cmu.edu
(1) Software Engineering Institute - CMU Estados Unidos
Software quality is the degree to which software possesses
a desired combination of attributes (modifiability,
security, performance, availability, etc). In this tutorial
we describe a few principles for analyzing a software
architecture to determine if it exhibits certain quality
attributes. We show how analysis techniques indigenous to
various quality attribute communities can provide a
foundation for performing software architecture evaluation.
Since attributes can interact or conflict - improving one
attribute often comes at the price of worsening one or more
of the others - it is necessary to trade-off among multiple
software quality attributes at the time the software
architecture of a system is specified, before the system is
developed.
It is important to point out that we do not aim at an
absolute measure of ``architecture quality"; rather our
purpose is to identify scenarios from the point of view of
a diverse group of stakeholders (e.g., the architect,
developers, users, sponsors) and to identify risks (e.g.,
inadequate performance, successful denial-of-service
attacks) and possible mitigation strategies (e.g.,
prototyping, modeling, simulation).
In the tutorial I will describe processes to conduct
architecture trade-off analyses developed by the Software
Engineering Institute (SEI). The objective of the
evaluations is to understand a software architecture's
fitness with respect to multiple software quality
attributes and to identify sensitivity points, trade-offs,
and risks. Sensitivity points are architectural decisions
that have significant impact on a quality attribute;
trade-off are sensitivity points that affect more than one
attribute; risks are potential problem in achieving the
desire attributes.
Keywords:Software Engineering, Software Quality Attributes
Mario Barbacci recently retired from the Software
Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University.
He was one of the founders of the SEI where he has served
in several technical and managerial positions, including
Project Leader (Distributed Systems), Program Director
(Real-time Distributed Systems, Product Attribute
Engineering), and Associate Director (Technology
Exploration Department). Prior to joining the SEI he was a
member of the faculty in the School of Computer Science at
Carnegie Mellon University. His current research interests
are in the areas of software architecture and distributed
systems. He has written numerous books, articles, and
technical reports and has contributed to books and
encyclopedias on subjects of technical interest. Barbacci
is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic
Engineers (IEEE) and the IEEE Computer Society, a member of
the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and a member
of Sigma Xi. He was the founding chairman of the
International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP)
Working Group 10.2 (Computer Descriptions and Tools) and
has served as chair of the Joint IEEE Computer Society/ACM
Steering Committee for the Establishment of Software
Engineering as a Profession (1993-1995), President-Elect,
President, and Past-President of the IEEE Computer Society
(1995-1997), IEEE Division V Director (1998-1999), IEEE TAB
Strategic Planning and Research Committee (2000-2002).
Barbacci is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and
Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the recipient of several
IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Contribution
Certificates, the ACM Recognition of Service Award, and the
IFIP Silver Core Award. Barbacci received bachelor's and
engineer's degrees in electrical engineering from the
Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria, Lima, Peru, and a
doctorate in computer science from Carnegie Mellon.
BibTex
@INPROCEEDINGS{barbacci04:1002,
AUTHOR = {Mario R. Barbacci},
TITLE = {Software Quality Attributes},
BOOKTITLE = {30ma Conferencia Latinoamericana de Informática (CLEI2004)},
YEAR = {2004},
editor = {Mauricio Solar and David Fernández-Baca and Ernesto Cuadros-Vargas},
pages = {3--3},
address = {},
month = Sep,
organization = {Sociedad Peruana de Computación},
note = {ISBN 9972-9876-2-0},
}
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