Software Engineering Institute

The software architecture of a software-intensive system greatly determines system quality. When used appropriately, software architecture evaluations can have a favorable effect on a delivered or modified government system. This technical note describes the application of the Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) to a major wargaming simulation system. A government-contractor team is developing the Wargame 2000 system at the Joint National Integration Center (formerly known as the Joint National Test Facility [JNTF]), Colorado. In this technical note, we present the contextual background about the software architecture, the organization, and the system being evaluated. Next, we present a general overview of the ATAM process. Finally, we describe the application of the ATAM to the Wargame 2000 system and present important results and benefits. While architecture evaluation is valuable early in the development life cycle, this case study illustrates that such evaluations are also useful when a system is well into development.