A discussion of the Quality Attributes pillar from the IASA certification path Published Feb 3, 2015

1. Quality Attributes
by Christopher Grant
christopher_grant@homedepot.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophergrant

2. Agenda
• Intro & Overview
• IASA Quality Attributes
• Balancing & Tradeoffs

3. Core Reading
Materials Covered in this session
support Chapter 5 from your
IASA ITABOK— IT Architecture
Body of Knowledge book

4. IASA Skills Taxonomy
Foundation Body of Knowledge
Software
Architecture
Infrastructure
Architecture
Information
Architecture
Business
Architecture
Enterprise Architecture
Business Technology Strategy
IT Environment
Quality Attributes
Human Dynamics
Design
5 foundation
Pillars
Specialization

5. What is quality
The standard of something as measured
against other things of a similar kind; the
degree of excellence of something.
- Google

6. Quality attributes across industries
• All industries measure the quality of their products
• Whole organizations are devoted to measuring quality
• Attributes are defined, measured and monitored
• Consider potential quality attributes
for the following four industries
– Clothing Manufacturing
– Food Manufacturing
– Shipping & Delivery
– Furniture & Bedding

7. Quality in Clothing Manufacturing
• Color
• Durability
• Stitching

8. Quality in Food Manufacturing
• Color / Appearance
• Flavor
• Firmness

9. Quality in Shipping & Delivery
• Processing Time
• Time in transit
• Delivery condition

10. Quality in Furniture & Bedding
• Comfort
• Durability
• Safety

11. What might some key IT attributes be for:
• Space Satellite
• Financial Trading
• Game
• Mobile
• Open Source
• CMS / Website Builder

12. Architecture Quality Attributes

13. Quality Attributes in IT Architecture
A quality attribute is a non-functional
characteristic of a component or a system. It
represents a cross-cutting architectural concern
for a system or system of systems.
- IASA

14. Quality Attributes
Number of 9’s Yearly
Downtime
3 Nines (99.9%) ~9 hours
4 Nines
(99.99%)
~1 hour
5 Nines
(99.999%)
~ 5 minutes
6 Nines
(999.999%)
~31 seconds
24/7 0
Must be measurable, monitored…
Availability Measures

15. Also known as the *ilities

16. IASA Groupings
Usage:
• Usability
• Localization
• Accessibility
• Personalization
• Customizability
Development:
• Manageability
• Maintainability
• Supportability
• Extensibility
• Flexibility
Operation:
• Performance
• Reliability
• Availability
• Scalability
Security

17. Usage
How your user interacts
with your system.
Concepts
- Usability
- Localization
- Accessibility

18. Development (or support)
How the system is constructed to
enable future needs and support
Concepts
• Flexibility
• Customizability
• Supportability
• Maintainability
• Extensibility

19. Operation Discussion
How the system will react in it's running state
Concepts
• Performance
• Scalability
• Reliability
• Availability

20. Security Discussion
Protecting your user's data and ensuring
continuity in the state of your system
Concepts
• Physical
• Network
• Platform
• Monitoring
• Standards

22. Packaging & Deployment Discussion
The expectations, process, and management of IT
products following the completion of development and
prior to “normal” day-to-day operating conditions
• Ensures project requirements are
successfully delivered to prod
• Ensures delivery of Quality
Attributes to prod
• Not just the features but also
how well they are delivered

23. Monitoring & Management Discussion
Monitoring & Managing quality attributes in a
standard and objective way
• Problem analysis
• Capacity planning
• Service level agreement (SLA)
• Issue response techniques
• Integrate metrics with processes

24. Attribute Balancing & Project Tradeoffs

25. Balancing Quality Attributes
• Achieving high levels of quality attributes may be
costly or prohibitive
• Improving one attribute may impact another
• It’s important to understand requirements upfront

26. Attribute Trade-offs
• Architectural decisions that may impact more than
one attribute are called trade-off points.
Flexibility FlexibilityFlexibility
Personalization Localization Maintainability
Complementary Neutral Negative

27. Trade off Matrix

28. Trade-off decision: Not encrypting data streaming
Drone: $4.5M
Hack: $26.00

29. Project trade-offs
• Time, cost, requirement, & resources constraints can
become a trade off in applying quality attributes

30. Identifying and prioritizing requirements
• Arrange attributes by group
• Prioritize by importance and
complexity
• Review trade-off points
• Balance requirements against
trade-offs, cost and time

31. Review
• Quality Attributes are critical for the success of your
architecture
• Iasa groups attributes into 4 groupings
– Usage
– Development
– Operation
– Security
• Consideration of packaging/deployment and
monitoring/management helps ensure attributes are effective
while they system is in use
• Requiring excellence from all attributes may be costly or
prohibitive. Review attribute impacts and trade offs to
balance needs of the project