Designing Quality Architecture: Incorporating ISO Standards into the Unified Process

Abstract

Requirements change with the ebbs and flows of a business. Applications must be able to react to changes in the business model and, likewise, their technology platform (i.e., architecture) must be agile. Often, the operations and environment requirements of a system affect the application's ability to be modified quickly. This article presents a methodology that combines ISO standards and UML (Unified Modeling Language) standards. the ISO model is used to identify the quality characteristics for software architecture. These attributes form an evaluation framework. Each functional requirement is defined as a use case model using UML notation. This model is expanded with the specific quality properties required based on the ISO model. the resulting use cases are prioritized on the basis of their architectural impact. With these use cases, several candidate architectures can be identified. Alternatives are compared to the evaluation framework to select one architecture design. A real-time monitoring system is used as a case study to reinforce the methodology introduced in the article.