Context

Making architectural decisions is a crucial task but also very difficult, considering the scope of the decisions and their impact on quality attributes. To make matters worse, architectural decisions need to combine both technical and business factors, which are very dissimilar by nature.

Objectives

We provide a cost-benefit approach and supporting tooling that treats architectural decisions as financial investments by: (a) combining both technical and business factors; and (b) transforming the involved factors into currency, allowing their uniform aggregation. Apart from illustrating the method, we validate both the proposed approach and the tool, in terms of fitness for purpose, usability, and potential limitations.

Method

To validate the approach, we have performed a case study in a software development company, in the domain of low-energy embedded systems. We employed triangulation in the data collection phase of the case study, by performing interviews, focus groups, an observational session, and questionnaires.

Results

The results of the study suggested that the proposed approach: (a) provides a structured process for systematizing decision-making; (b) enables the involvement of multiple stakeholders, distributing the decision-making responsibility to more knowledgeable people; (c) uses monetized representations that are important for assessing decisions in a unified manner; and (d) enables decision reuse and documentation.

Conclusions

The results of the study suggest that architectural decision-making can benefit from treating this activity as a financial investment. The various benefits that have been identified from mixing financial and technological aspects are well-accepted from industrial stakeholders.

中文翻译：

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建筑决策作为一项金融投资：一个工业案例研究

语境

考虑到决策的范围及其对质量属性的影响，做出架构决策是一项至关重要的任务，但也非常困难。更糟糕的是，架构决策需要将技术和业务因素结合在一起，而这在本质上是非常不同的。

目标

我们提供了一种成本效益方法和支持工具，通过以下方式将架构决策视为金融投资：（a）结合技术和商业因素；（b）将涉及的因素转换为货币，以使其统一汇总。除了说明该方法外，我们还在适用性，可用性和潜在限制方面验证了所提出的方法和工具。

方法

为了验证该方法，我们在一家软件开发公司的低能耗嵌入式系统领域进行了案例研究。在案例研究的数据收集阶段，我们通过进行访谈，焦点小组，观察性会议和问卷调查来进行三角剖分。

结果

研究结果表明，拟议的方法：（a）为系统化决策提供了结构化的过程；（b）使多个利益相关者参与，将决策责任分配给知识渊博的人；（c）使用货币化表示形式，这对于统一评估决策很重要；（d）实现决策重用和文档化。

结论

研究结果表明，将建筑活动作为金融投资可以从建筑决策中受益。工业利益相关者普遍接受了从混合财务和技术方面所确定的各种好处。