Is Architecture Measurable? Towards Creating, Managing, and Measuring Architecture and Resulting Product Line Implementations

This research sought to distill and define the fundamentals of system and software architecture analysis and form the basis by which a design can be tested and analyzed prior to its implementation. In short, the question "can a design be measured against the business-level objectives and quality-of-use architectural requirements. The research focuses on building a body of knowledge that supports an analysis, built on fundamentals which scales and can serve as the basis by which we can transform when and how architecture validation can occur. This research supports ongoing work towards developing a strategic comprehensive architecture approach and extends the analysis and documentation of the Key Business Drivers (KBDs) and architectural drivers supporting the efficient development and sustainment of interoperable aviation mission systems. A prototype process that leverages the discovered relationships and weights for use by current Architects and Senior Systems Engineers is shown. Programs implementing this approach are expected to benefit from the planned reuse of architectural artifacts for follow up systems engineering products supporting the development of reusable component product lines avoiding the long-term challenges of unrealized architectural objectives.