This document discusses team situational awareness and architectural decision making. It proposes that team situational awareness, where every team member has the required situational awareness for their role, can lead to better collaborative decisions. It presents the Software Architecture Warehouse, a tool that was developed to support team situational awareness and decision making. The warehouse allows teams to share information about decisions, alternatives, positions and rationales. Formative evaluations found it helped decision making processes but also identified challenges around position changes, collective focus, and decision process framing. Overall, the document argues that documenting the decision making process is important for software architects.
Team Situational Awareness and Architectural Decision Making with the Software Architecture Warehouse
1. Team Situational Awareness and
Architectural Decision Making with the
Software Architecture Warehouse
Marcin Nowak and Cesare Pautasso
marcin.nowak@usi.ch, c.pautasso@ieee.org
Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland
2. Team Situational Awareness and
Architectural Decision Making with the
Software Architecture Warehouse
Marcin Nowak and Cesare Pautasso
marcin.nowak@usi.ch, c.pautasso@ieee.org
Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland
3. “The life of a software architect is a long and
rapid succession of suboptimal design decisions
taken partly in the dark”*
3
Philippe Kruchten
6. Situational Awareness
“The perception of elements in the environment
within a volume of time and space, the
comprehension of their meaning, and the
projection of their status in the near future”*
6
* Endsley, M.R. (1995b). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors 37(1), 32–64
7. Situational Awareness
“The perception of elements in the environment
within a volume of time and space, the
comprehension of their meaning, and the
projection of their status in the near future”*
7
* Endsley, M.R. (1995b). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors 37(1), 32–64
10. “*…+ 86% of architectural decisions are group decisions.”
10
* Difficulty of Architectural Decisions – A Survey with Professional Architects Dan Tofan, Matthias Galster, Paris Avgeriou, ECSA 2013
14. Team Situational Awareness
“The degree to which every team member
possesses the SA required for his or her
responsibilities”*
14
* Endsley, M.R. (1995b). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors 37(1), 32–64
15. Team Situational Awareness
“The degree to which every team member
possesses the SA required for his or her
responsibilities”*
15
* Endsley, M.R. (1995b). Toward a theory of situation awareness in dynamic systems. Human Factors 37(1), 32–64
17. Team Situational Awareness for
Architecture Decisions
17
distributed
decision space
decision metrics
decision process guidance
Perception
Comprehension
Projection
18. Reactive design document
18
Decision Space
Architect
Architect
Architect
Architect
Other stakeholders
Real-time sharing,
collaborative decision making
42. Formative Evaluation Findings
42
• Connectivity
• Position volatility
• Decision space dynamics vary greatly
• Need for decision process framing
(sealing, time-boxing)
• Lack of collective attention focus
• Multimodality of the decision discussion
42
48. Summary
48
• Documenting decision making process is as
important as documenting decisions itself
• There is a lot to learn about how software
architects make decisions (as a group)
48
50. Team Situational Awareness and
Architectural Decision Making with the
Software Architecture Warehouse
Marcin Nowak and Cesare Pautasso
marcin.nowak@usi.ch, c.pautasso@ieee.org
Faculty of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland
Public software architecture warehouse demo:
http://demo.saw.sonyx.net
http://saw.inf.unisi.ch
Editor's Notes
having SA
distinguishstatus, properties, features of the environmentinterpret relations, interpreting valuesstate based on the current conditions and known dynamics
for the purpose of this talk
hence
stakeholders
shifting
----- Meeting Notes (24.06.2013 11:58) -----state machine of the choice over the design issue
----- Meeting Notes (24.06.2013 11:58) -----dual color colliding alternative
relate to the TA levels
put stress on problems and first then arrive to the solutions