Description and analysis of design decisions: An ontological approach

Abstract

A success software development process requires a good design stage. During the design, a set of decisions is made in order to improve the productivity, reduce costs for reimplementation and obtain reliable systems, in special for critical domains, such as bank management systems or systems for aeronautics. Nevertheless, it is not easy to find documentation about design decisions or tools which support this process. To address this issue, this article describes a solution based on ontologies to describe design decisions. In order to identify the main elements a systematic literature review was carried out. This review also helped to identify some of the most common design decisions. These elements were used to develop the ontology which allows answering the problem raised. This ontology could be a useful tool for architects and designers during the design stage of a system.