Reviewing product line architectures: Experience report of ATAM in an automotive context

Abstract

Product lines are an important system development paradigm in the automotive industry to amortize costs beyond a single product. The paradigm is well established in the mechanical and electrical engineering practice in automotive companies like Bosch. As software is covering more and more functionality in cars, software product lines are getting more attention. The architecture of a software-intensive system is a key asset in developing a software product line. The Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method (ATAM) developed by the SEI assesses the quality of software architecture early in the development process. ATAM is therefore a useful review technique to guarantee important quality attributes of every single product created with the product line architecture later on. This article reports about the experience Bosch made in using ATAM in two cases. Benefits in using ATAM are not only the review results itself but a better documented and better understood architecture. We experienced the most important benefit of ATAM is the rising stakeholders’ awareness of architectural decisions, tradeoffs, and risks. It illuminates the software architecture better than any written documentation. Bosch employees are trained in the evaluation roles in order to transition ATAM to Bosch. The reports conclude with some suggestions for improving the ATAM itself and the training of ATAM roles.