Print Email Facebook Twitter A cognitive model for software architecture complexity Title A cognitive model for software architecture complexity Author Bouwers, E. Lilienthal, C. Visser, J. Van Deursen, A. Faculty Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Department Software Technology Date 2010-12-31 Abstract Evaluating the complexity of the architecture of a softwaresystem is a difficult task. Many aspects have to be considered to come to a balanced assessment. Several architecture evaluation methods have been proposed, but very few define a quality model to be used during the evaluation process. In addition, those methods that do introduce a quality model do not neccesarilly explain why elements of the model influence the complexity of an architecture. In this paper we propose a Software Architecture Complexity Model (SACM) which can be used to reason about the complexity of a software architecture. This model is based on theories from cognitive science and system attributes that have proven to be indicators of maintainability in practice. SACM can be used as a formal model to explain existing quality models, and as a starting point within architecture evaluation methods such as ATAM. Alternatively, it can be used in a stand-alone fashion to reason about a software architecture’s complexity Preprint accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the International Conference on Program Comprehension (ICPC), Braga (Portugal), June 30-July 2, 2010, IEEE Computer Society. Subject Software Architecture EvaluationSoftware ArchitectureComplexityCognitive models To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:ab778de2-9f1b-4f2d-b73b-d7fbcae269d3 Publisher Delft University of Technology, Software Engineering Research Group ISSN 1872-5392 Source Technical Report Series TUD-SERG-2010-009 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type report Rights © 2010 The Author(s) . Software Engineering Research Group, Department of Software Technology, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, Delft University of Technology Files PDF TUD-SERG-2010-009.pdf 252.19 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:ab778de2-9f1b-4f2d-b73b-d7fbcae269d3/datastream/OBJ/view