Architecture-Level Evolvability Assessment: Assessing Sustainability of Software Product Evolution

This paper proposes a comprehensive architecture assessment method, a so-called Architecture-Level Evolvability Assessment (ALEA). The ALEA method aims at assessing how well the current architecture of software products is able to accommodate future uses and business contexts without jeopardizing the continuous software development. The ALEA method offers not only to broaden prospects of architectural changes, but also to assess the impact of changes on sustainability. In order to assess the sustainability, the ALEA method employs an evolvability framework consisting of sufficient contexts to propagate the effects of the architectural changes. The key element of the ALEA method is the involvement of a ‘walking architecture’ — a person or a group of people who carries most if not all the architectural knowledge and makes design decisions — throughout the assessment period. Based on empirical evidence of implementation and validation of the ALEA method (on a case study), the ALEA method is applicable for software product line development and agile software development approaches.