Software Architecture Assessment for Sustainability: A Case Study

This repository contains the supplementary material to support the paper published at the International Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA) 2024 titled, "Software Architecture Assessment for Sustainability: A Case Study". This repository can be used to replicate the study and carry out a Software Architecture Evaluation of other software systems.

Repository Structure

This is the root directory of the repository. The directory is structured as follows:

rep-pkg-sustainable-canvas
 .
 |
 |--- src/		Source code to generate SIS
 |
 |--- docs/		Architecture documentation, input and output data of intermediary steps, etc.
 |
 |--- data/		Data used in the paper including templates and final results

Getting started

Here, we provide step-by-step instructions on using this repository, including requirements, and installation/script execution steps.

Instatiation of the Blueprint

Here we provide the steps involved in the SA assessment, inputs and outputs of each steps along with the resource used/produced. The detailed execution of steps can be found in our previous work (SA evaluation Blueprint) and this paper.

#	Step	Input	Resource	Output	Resource
1	Preparation	Information Slide Set	Slides	Stakeholders	Process director, architects, functional manager, network and traffic personal
		Coordination	Setting up meeting schedules and emails
2	Requirement Identification	Stakeholders	Process director, architects, functional manager, network and traffic personal	Quality Attributes	- See docs/Non-functionalRequirements.pdf
		Requirement Documents	Confidential
3	Goal Identification	Stakeholders	Process director, architects, functional manager, network and traffic personal	Sustainability Goal	Sustainability Assessment of Canvas integration at the educational institute. Optimize resource utilization
4	Method Presentation	SA Assessment Method Slide Set	Slides	Expectations from stakeholders	Expectations: - an internal QA prioritization for reflection - how can the evaluation help architects define feature requirements for Instructure (the SaaS provider - in this case SaaS is Canvas) - how can the evaluation help the management define more concrete sustainability requirements for next procurement
5	Architecture Presentation	Architecture documentation	Some documents are confidential, we only present the final extracted data in data/Extracted Design Decisions.xlsx	Sub-set of architecture documentation	- Some documents are confidential, we only present the final extracted data in data/ExtractedDesignDecisions.xlsx - See docs/DecisionDashboard.xlsx
		Tacit Knowledge	Annotated in the original documents, it became part of the final file in data/Extracted Design Decisions.xlsx and docs/arch.pdf
6	Prioritization	Quality Attributes	[Slides][docs/step6-slides.pptx]	Prioritized QAs	See Sheet "QAs"
7	Identification of Architectural Approaches	Sub-set of architectural approaches	- Some documents are confidential, we only present the final extracted data in data/Extracted Design Decisions.xlsx - See docs/DecisionDashboard.xlsx	Decision Documents	See docs/DecisionDashboard.xlsx
8	Generation of data for analysis	Decision Documents	DecisionDashboard	Design Decisions and Ratioanle	See data/ExtractedDesignDecisions.xlsx
9	Evaluation of obtained data	Design Decisions and Rationale	Extracted Design Decisions	Sustainability Impacts and Trade-offs	- For inter-QA trade-offs, see data/dmatrix.xlsx - For inter-sustainability dimension trade-offs, see Sheet "Trade-offs with SIS" in data/results.xlsx
		Prioritized Quality Attribute	See Sheet "QAs"
		Tacit Knowledge	Documented as part of data/ExtractedDesignDecisions.xlsx
10	Improve and take action	Design Decisions and Rationale	Extracted Design Decisions	Updated design decisions	Extracted Design Decisions
		Prioritized Quality Attribute	See Sheet "QAs"
		Sustainability Impacts and Trade-offs	- DMatrix - Sheet "Trade-offs with SIS"
11	Presentation of results	All inputs and outputs	All resources	Evaluation Report	Paper

Generating a Sustainability Impact Score (SIS)

Pre-requisites

• Clone the repository to use it for your project or replication of steps using, git clone https://github.com/iffatfatima/rep-pkg-sustainable-canvas
• Prioritize QAs
• Document the design decisions using the DD_Template, assign QAs to each design option (DO)
• Create a DMatrix for each design option (see DMatrix for example). Detailed instructions are provided in the paper.

SIS

• Run the following command in src folder for all design concerns

  python score.py "../data/dmatrix.xlsx" <option-prefix>

  For example, to get the Sustainability Impact Score (SIS) for all design options for design concern DC-5, use the option prefix "O-5." Example command:

  python score.py "../data/dmatrix.xlsx" "O-5."

  This will provide the SIS for all options of DC-5 based on the DMatrix.

Example output:

Document the SISs as provided in results for observing trade-offs

How to cite this work

Software Architecture Assessment for Sustainability: A Case Study

@inproceedings{fatima-2024-SA-assess-sus,
  title={{Software Architecture Assessment for Sustainability: A Case Study}},
  author={Iffat Fatima and Patricia Lago},
  booktitle={Software Architecture},
  publisher={Springer Nature Switzerland},
  year={2024}
}

This publication is based on following preliminary work

A Review of Software Architecture Evaluation Methods for Sustainability Assessment

@inproceedings{fatima-2023-SA-eval-SLR,
  author={Fatima, Iffat and Lago, Patricia},
  booktitle={2023 IEEE 20th International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C)}, 
  title={A Review of Software Architecture Evaluation Methods for Sustainability Assessment}, 
  year={2023},
  pages={191-194},
  doi={10.1109/ICSA-C57050.2023.00050}
}

Towards a Sustainability-aware Software Architecture Evaluation for Cloud-Based Software Services

@inproceedings{fatima-2023-SA-eval-BP,
title = "Towards a Sustainability-aware Software Architecture Evaluation for Cloud-Based Software Services",
author = "Iffat Fatima and Patricia Lago",
booktitle="Software Architecture. ECSA 2023 Tracks and Workshops",
year="2023",
publisher="Springer International Publishing",
address="Cham",
language = "English",
}