Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards. – Galileo Galilei

Know Your Why

Why are we building so many systems? Is it to reflect different ideas or the ways to solve them?

I think the context is very important to understand quality attributes and to have a prioritized list of which quality attributes to show why this system is worth to build.

Try to understand the context for system solutions with quality attributes context. I have some helpful questions to ask:

• Why did the system solve?
• What is the vision of system?
• What is stakeholders (customers) background?
• What else have they built?
• What was the It-environment, economic, and organisation situation at the time of building the solution?
• Has the system been built on product or rebuilt?
• Did any events affect the solution— an economic change, a change of leadership, the emergence of new technology?

It is principle to introduce the usage and relations of quality attributes. IT-architects need putt the quality attributes in a context, have understanding of
the software development process and the interests on systems.

The term quality attribute is perhaps not unknown to people within software development but I have also seen that there are many different interpretations.

What is quality attribute?

A quality attribute is a measurable or testable property of a system that is used to indicate how well the system satisfy the needs of stakeholders.

Read about the list of system quality attributes. There are most commons software quality attributes.

How

Software architecture can influence not only the quality of your application but also functional requirements. There are no right solutions, instead it is always a trade-off between different quality attributes.

Have you ever had a project where no one talk about quality (quality attributes) at all? IT-architects have to make prioritization of quality attributes and enable to pick the architecture that fits the choices that facilitate the priorities of the stakeholders.

The quality attributes workshop is a right format to gather and prioritize quality attribute scenarios by stakeholders.

If you think about your last project, what would you say were the three most important quality attributes and why?