Software architecture adaptability: an NFR approach

Adaptation of software systems is almost an inevitable process, due to the change in customer requirements, needs for faster development of new, or maintenance of existing, software systems, etc. No doubt numerous techniques have been developed to deal with adaptation of software systems. In this paper we present an overview of some of these techniques. As the first step in the development of software solution it is our opinion that software architecture should itself be adaptable for the final software system to be adaptable. In order to systematically support adaptation at the architectural level, this paper adapts the NFR (Non-Functional Requirements) Framework and treats software adaptability requirement as a goal to be achieved during development. Through this adaptation, then, consideration of design alternatives, analysis of tradeoffs and rationalization of design decisions are all carried out in relation to the stated goals, and captured in historical records. This NFR approach can also be adapted to a knowledge-based approach for (semi-)automatically generating architectures for adaptable software systems and we also discuss how this can be achieved.