SATURN 2005 Presentations

This file contains presentations from the first Software Architecture Technology User Network Workshop (SATURN 2005) event (April 6-7, 2005, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania).

Sessions and presentations included:

* An Experience Report on Using UML 2.0 to Document Software Architectures, Art Culbertson
* Architecture Design Expert, Felix Bachmann and Mark Klein
* Architecture Reviews @ Bosch (Keynote), Stefan Ferber
* Are All Quality Goals Created Equal?, John Steven
* ATAM Experiences, Pankaj Jalote
* Integrating Software Architecture Evaluation in a DoD System Acquisition, John Bergey and Timothy Morrow
* Making the Role Your Own (Keynote), Nanette Brown
* Product Line Engineering for Global Development, Daniel J. Paulish
* The ABACUS Architectural Approach to Computer-Based System and Enterprise Evolution, Tim O'Neil
* Quality Attribute Driven Software Architecture Reconstruction, Liam O’Brien
* Working Session
* Closing Session


An Experience Report on Using UML 2.0 to Document Software Architectures, Art Culbertson

The success of UML 1.x as a notation supporting a broad range software modeling requirements has led to its emergence as the standard medium of communication for the software engineering community. However, UML 1.x does not provide constructs well-suited to documenting software architectures and attempts to adapt UML 1.x semantics to support software architecture concepts have yielded mixed results. The recently adopted UML 2.0 version provides a number of new and modified constructs that address several key deficiencies of UML 1.x related to software architecture. Despite these enhancements, the size and complexity of the UML 2.0 specification combined with the lack of experience-based guidance presents a serious challenge to practitioners that wish to adopt UML 2.0 as a comprehensive notation for documenting software architectures. In this presentation we will discuss our experiences using UML 2.0 in the context of the "Views and Beyond" approach with particular emphasis on achieving information continuity across views.



Architecture Design Expert, Felix Bachmann and Mark Klein

The goal of an Architecture Design Expert (ArchE) is to help an architect in making architecture decisions to support the systems quality attribute requirements. This presentation discusses more formally the architecture design process and demonstrates, using the ArchE tool, how implemented quality attribute knowledge can help in designing software systems.



Architecture Reviews @ Bosch (Keynote), Stefan Ferber

Finding Risks can be fun?

Automotive Software Architectures: As software is covering more and more functionality in cars, software architectures draw more attention. Software architectures represent the earliest design decisions in the development process. They have far-reaching effects on the quality attributes of the system and, thus, are extremely difficult to get right first and hard to change later on. The Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM) developed by the SEI assesses the quality of software architecture early in the development process. ATAM is a scenario-based review method that uses business goals to evaluate the quality of software architectures.

Bosch Experience: Bosch uses ATAM for five years in reviewing important software and system architectures. The improvement of the method and the knowledge transition from the SEI to Bosch will be discussed in detail.

Benefits of ATAM: Benefits in using ATAM are not only the review results itself but a better documented and better understood architecture. We experienced that the most important benefit of ATAM is the rising stakeholders' awareness of architectural decisions, tradeoffs, and risks. It illuminates the software architecture better than any written documentation.



Are All Quality Goals Created Equal?, John Steven

Process-savvy organizations highlight non-functional attributes of software and have provided process tools to help organizations consider software beyond its features. But are all these non-functional (or quality) goals created equal? When it comes time to think about each quality goal, different activities are optimal. Performance takes a different knowledge set than maintainability. Tools that help with code vulnerabilities operate very differently than tools that probe code for performance bottlenecks.

Where can practitioners think about quality goals as a whole and at what level of process does each quality goal demand its own attention? when will development get benefit from generic methods such as QAW, ARID, and ATAM, and where will they need specific activities (such as RUP's CLASP) and knowledge? This talk will directly address these questions through the speaker's experience.



ATAM Experiences, Pankaj Jalote

Pankaj Jalote discusses how Corporate Research ABB uses the SEI ATAM to analyze the architectures of their applications and systems, which results in both decision making supports for their stakeholder and good practice in general.



Integrating Software Architecture Evaluation in a DoD System Acquisition, John Bergey and Timothy Morrow

This SATURN 2005 presentation by John Bergey and Timothy Morrow of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) discusses how to integrate software architecture evaluation in a DoD system acquisition.

1. CLIP program background - This section would discuss the high-level requirements of the program, desired quality attributes for the program, program challenges, current stage in DoD 5000 framework, and the program's previous software architecture experience.
2. SEI goals for Working with CLIP - Overview of the technical work plan and the vision of applying software architecture technology to an acquisition   program.
3. Pre-contract Activities - Discuss the Acquisition Planning Workshop, CLIP program office QAW, and integrating software architecture technology into   the CLIP Request for Proposal.
4. CLIP System Development Documents - Discuss the documents that needed to include wording for software architecture technology in the DoD 5000   Acquisition Framework and a timeline to see the total picture
5. Lesson Learned - These will be the lessons we learned in applying software architecture technology.



Making the Role Your Own (Keynote), Nanette Brown

Keynote presentation by Nanette Brown of Pitney Bowes from the SEI SATURN 2005 Workshop, held in Pittsburgh, PA from April 6-7, 2005.


Product Line Engineering for Global Development, Daniel J. Paulish

This paper describes how product line engineering practices are being used in Siemens to better plan and manage global development projects. Software products are growing in complexity and the development organizations to implement new features are also growing in staff size. An approach is summarized to decompose large-scale requirements into a well-structured set of software components that can be developed in parallel among globally distributed development teams. The approach applies best practices of software requirements engineering including business object modeling coupled with product line architecture design. Agile development processes are exploited so that a collection of small, distributed application component development teams are controlled by a central organization. It is expected that the approach will result in substantial time-to-market and productivity improvements by application of modern industrial practices in the areas of requirements, design, and organization patterns.



The ABACUS Architectural Approach to Computer-Based System and Enterprise Evolution, Tim O'Neil

The enterprise computer-based systems employed by the organisations of today can be extremely complex. Not only do they consist of countless hardware and software products from many varied sources, but they often span continents, piggybacking on public networks. These systems are essential for undertaking business and general operations in the modern environment, and yet the ability of organisations to control their evolution is questionable.

The emerging practice of enterprise architecture seeks to control that complexity through the use of a holistic and top-down perspective. However, the toolsets already in use, are very much bottom-up by nature. To overcome the limitations of current enterprise architecture practices, the authors propose the use of the ABACUS methodology and toolset.

The presenter concludes that by using ABACUS to analyse software and enterprise systems, architects can guide the design and evolution of architectures based on quantifiable non-functional requirements. Furthermore, hierarchical 3D visualisation provides a meaningful and intuitive means for conceiving and communicating complex architectures.



Quality Attribute Driven Software Architecture Reconstruction, Liam O’Brien

Architecture reconstruction is the process by which architectural views of an implemented system are obtained from existing artifacts. This presentation outlines research on architecture reconstruction that is driven by quality attribute analysis. The analysis typically occurs when existing systems hit their architectural boundaries caused by product growth or expansion scenarios. The information gathered during architecture reconstruction has to satisfy the information needs for these scenarios in order to provide reasoning during decision-making processes. The work is crucial for organizations that have to make architectural decisions about existing systems, or want to lower the adoption barriers for product lines by investigating the reuse of existing assets.



Working Session Notes

Working session notes from SATURN 2005, April 6-7, 2005.



Closing Session Notes

Closing session notes from SATURN 2005, April 6-7, 2005.
