Assessing Design Quality From a Software Architectural Perspective
Jeromy Carrière, Rick Kazman · 2000
Abstract: In this paper, we take the position that good object oriented designs accrue from attention to both the design of objects and classes and to the architectural framework which defines how instances of those classes interact. We argue that an architecture should be assessed for conceptual integrity, and describe tool support for making such an assessment. 1 What Makes a Good Object Oriented Design? At the Software Engineering Institute, we are regularly asked to assess the design of large software intensive systems. We have gathered and documented a considerable amount of expertise aimed at answering the question of what makes a good design, object oriented or otherwise ([1], [2]). We have also produced and widely applied a method for investigating the “goodness ” of designs [4]. So, what has this wealth of experience taught us? In our experience, design goodness flows from the ability to do architectural reasoning. This appears to merely replace one question with another, for what factors contribute to the ability to do architectural reasoning? We will discuss two of these factors (a more complete discussion can be found in [2]):