Using critics to analyze evolving architectures
Jason E. Robbins, David M. Hilbert, David Redmiles · 1996
Software architectures evolve as the result of numerous, interrelated design decisions. At any point in an architecture’s evolution, current decisions can critically affect alternatives at later stages, and each decision has the potential of requiring previous decisions to be reconsidered. Analysis techniques that provide feedback only after “complete ” sequences of design decisions have been made do not directly support the evolutionary nature of the architecture design process. In this paper we present an approach to architectural analysis that more closely supports evolution by providing feedback as