Quality attributes use in architecture design decision methods: research and practice

Over the past 10 years software architecture has been perceived as the result of a set of architecture design decisions rather than the elements that form part of the software design. As quality attributes are considered major drivers of the design process to achieve high quality systems, the design decisions that drive the selection and use of specific quality properties and vice versa are closely related. Consequently, quality attributes must play a role for decision making processes and be documented alongside the decisions captured. Consequently, we conduct a systematic literature review to study the importance and impact of the relationships between quality attributes and architecture design decisions and to what extent existing architecture knowledge management methods and tools deal with the decisions that affect the quality of a system. We also report on the challenges and future research paths for architectural knowledge management methods and tools. Our results reveal important explicit relationships between both software artifacts, the role of uncertainty in decision making and empirical studies reporting the use of quality attributes in architecture knowledge management activities.