|
Architectural Decision
In software engineering and software architecture design, architectural decisions are design decisions that address architecturally significant requirements; they are perceived as hard to make and/or costly to change. Characteristics Architectural decisions influence and impact the non-functional characteristics of a system. Each architectural decision describes a concrete, architecturally significant design issue (a.k.a. design problem, decision required) for which several potential solutions (a.k.a. options, alternatives) exist. An architectural decision captures the result of a conscious, often collaborative option selection process and provides design rationale for the decision making outcome, e.g., by referencing one or more of the quality attributes addressed by the architectural decision and answering "why" questions about the design and option selection. Architectural decisions concern a software system as a whole, or one or more of the core components of such a system. Ty ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Architecture
Software architecture is the fundamental structure of a software system and the discipline of creating such structures and systems. Each structure comprises software elements, relations among them, and properties of both elements and relations. The ''architecture'' of a software system is a metaphor, analogous to the architecture of a building. It functions as a blueprint for the system and the developing project, which project management can later use to extrapolate the tasks necessary to be executed by the teams and people involved. Software architecture is about making fundamental structural choices that are costly to change once implemented. Software architecture choices include specific structural options from possibilities in the design of the software. For example, the systems that controlled the Space Shuttle launch vehicle had the requirement of being very fast and very reliable. Therefore, an appropriate real-time computing language would need to be chosen. Addition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Design
Software design is the process by which an agent creates a specification of a software artifact intended to accomplish goals, using a set of primitive components and subject to constraints. Software design may refer to either "all the activity involved in conceptualizing, framing, implementing, commissioning, and ultimately modifying complex systems" or "the activity following requirements specification and before programming, as ... na stylized software engineering process." Software design usually involves problem-solving and planning a software solution. This includes both a low-level component and algorithm design and a high-level, architecture design. Overview Software design is the process of envisioning and defining software solutions to one or more sets of problems. One of the main components of software design is the software requirements analysis (SRA). SRA is a part of the software development process that lists specifications used in software engineering. If ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knowledge Management
Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making the best use of knowledge. An established List of academic disciplines, discipline since 1991, KM includes courses taught in the fields of business administration, information systems, management, Library science, library, and information science. Other fields may contribute to KM research, including information and media, computer science, public health and policy, public policy. Several universities offer dedicated master's degrees in knowledge management. Many large companies, public institutions, and non-profit organisations have resources dedicated to internal KM efforts, often as a part of their strategic management, business strategy, information technology, IT, or human resource management departments. Several consulting companies ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Rationale
A design rationale is an explicit documentation of the reasons behind decisions made when designing a system or artifact. As initially developed by W.R. Kunz and Horst Rittel, design rationale seeks to provide argumentation-based structure to the political, collaborative process of addressing wicked problems. Overview A design rationale is the explicit listing of decisions made during a design process, and the reasons why those decisions were made.Jarczyk, Alex P.; Löffler, Peter; Shipman III, Frank M. (1992), "Design Rationale for Software Engineering: A Survey", ''25th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences'', 2, pp. 577-586 Its primary goal is to support designers by providing a means to record and communicate the argumentation and reasoning behind the design process.Horner, J.; Atwood, M.E. (2006), "Effective Design Rationale: Understanding the Barriers", in Dutoit, A.H.; McCall, R.; Mistrík, I. et al., Rationale Management in Software Engineering, Springer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Attribute-driven Design
Attribute-driven design (also called ADD or Attribute-driven design method) is a methodology to create software architectures that takes into account the quality attributes of the software. It was previously known as the Architecture Based Design Method (or ABD), but due to trademark issues the name was changed to Attribute-driven design around 2001. The attribute-driven design method In the book ''Software architecture in practice'' the authors describe ADD as an iterative method that, at each iteration, helps the architect to do the following steps: * Choose a part of the system to design. * Marshal all the architecturally significant requirements for the selected part. This means that you select all quality attributes and business goals that could affect the architecture of this phase. * Create an architecture for the selected part that meets the selected architecturally significant requirements and test this design. Required input ADD can only be started successfully when ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Architectural Pattern (computer Science)
An architectural pattern is a general, reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem in software architecture within a given context. The architectural patterns address various issues in software engineering, such as computer hardware performance limitations, high availability and minimization of a business risk. Some architectural patterns have been implemented within software frameworks. The use of the word "pattern" in the software industry was influenced by similar concepts as expressed in traditional architecture, such as Christopher Alexander's ''A Pattern Language'' (1977) which discussed the practice in terms of establishing a pattern lexicon, prompting the practitioners of computer science to contemplate their own design lexicon. Usage of this metaphor within the software engineering profession became commonplace after the publication of ''Design Patterns'' (1994) by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides—now commonly known as the "Gang of F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Group Polarization
In social psychology, group polarization refers to the tendency for a group to make decisions that are more extreme than the initial inclination of its members. These more extreme decisions are towards greater risk if individuals' initial tendencies are to be risky and towards greater caution if individuals' initial tendencies are to be cautious. The phenomenon also holds that a group's attitude toward a situation may change in the sense that the individuals' initial attitudes have strengthened and intensified after group discussion, a phenomenon known as attitude polarization. Overview Group polarization is an important phenomenon in social psychology and is observable in many social contexts. For example, a group of women who hold moderately feminist views tend to demonstrate heightened pro-feminist beliefs following group discussion. Similarly, studies have shown that after deliberating together, mock jury members often decided on punitive damage awards that were either larger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Groupthink
Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce a tendency among its members to agree at all costs. This causes the group to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation. Groupthink is a construct of social psychology, but has an extensive reach and influences literature in the fields of communication studies, political science, management, and organizational theory, as well as important aspects of deviant religious cult behaviour. Overview Groupthink is sometimes stated to occur (more broadly) within natural groups within the community, for example to explain the lifelong different mindsets of those with differing political views (such as "conservatism" and "liberalism" in the U.S. political context or the purported benefits ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Software Evolution
Software evolution is the continual development of a piece of software after its initial release to address changing stakeholder and/or market requirements. Software evolution is important because organizations invest large amounts of money in their software and are completely dependent on this software. Software evolution helps software adapt to changing businesses requirements, fix defects, and integrate with other changing systems in a software system environment. General introduction Fred Brooks, in his key book ''The Mythical Man-Month'', states that over 90% of the costs of a typical system arise in the maintenance phase, and that any successful piece of software will inevitably be maintained. In fact, Agile methods stem from maintenance-like activities in and around web based technologies, where the bulk of the capability comes from frameworks and standards. Software maintenance addresses bug fixes and minor enhancements, while software evolution focuses on adaptation and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Code Reviews
Code review (sometimes referred to as peer review) is a software quality assurance activity in which one or several people check a program mainly by viewing and reading parts of its source code, and they do so after implementation or as an interruption of implementation. At least one of the persons must not be the code's author. The persons performing the checking, excluding the author, are called "reviewers". Although direct discovery of quality problems is often the main goal, code reviews are usually performed to reach a combination of goals: * ''Better code quality'' improve internal code quality and maintainability (readability, uniformity, understandability, etc.) * ''Finding defects'' improve quality regarding external aspects, especially correctness, but also find performance problems, security vulnerabilities, injected malware, ... * ''Learning/Knowledge transfer'' help in transferring knowledge about the codebase, solution approaches, expectations regarding quality, e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dialogue Mapping
The issue-based information system (IBIS) is an argumentation-based approach to clarifying wicked problems—complex, ill-defined problems that involve multiple stakeholders. Diagrammatic visualization using IBIS notation is often called issue mapping. IBIS was invented by Werner Kunz and Horst Rittel in the 1960s. According to Kunz and Rittel, "Issue-Based Information Systems (IBIS) are meant to support coordination and planning of political decision processes. IBIS guides the identification, structuring, and settling of issues raised by problem-solving groups, and provides information pertinent to the discourse." Subsequently, the understanding of planning and design as a process of argumentation (of the designer with himself or with others) has led to the use of IBIS in design rationale, Originally presented to the ACADIA '88 Conference, Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture, University of Michigan, October 1988. where IBIS notation is one of a number of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
