Software architecture innovation cycle - development, documentation, and compliance checking

The results and activities presented in this report were conducted in the context of the ArQuE project (ArQuE stands for Architecture-centric Quality Engineering). The goal of ArQuE is to develop an integrated and comprehensive method that enables goal-oriented, architecture-centric, and strategic quality engineering based on experiences with existing systems and their properties assessed by reverse engineering, metrics and historic data. This report introduces and describes the software architecture innovation cycle (see Section 1.3), which comprise four parts: - Quality profiles (see Chapter 3) - Architecture development (see Chapter 4) - Component engineering, implementation and maintenance - Architecture compliance checking (see Chapter 5) The vision of the ArQuE project is to develop an approach that enables a smooth interaction and flow between the four main parts. Therefore, the software engineering building blocks quality engineering, reverse engineering, and metrics have to be integrated into the software architecture innovation cycle. To measure the efficiency and the impact of the ArQuE approach the continuous validation of the actions taken and the development of new or modified architecture analyses are necessary. Chapter 6 sketches out how to combine the different building blocks within software architecture innovation cycle. In the course of the ArQuE project, we aim at developing a systematic approach that details the first sketch and that is validated for embedded systems software produced by the partners of the ArQuE consortium.