Choosing the Best Design Strategy from Requirements. A Value-Based Approach

Various different valid software design solutions may respond satisfactorily to the same product requirements. In addition, a great part of the success of a software project depends on the software design selected. However, there are very few methods that quantify how much value will be added by each particular design strategy, and hence very little time is spent in choosing the best design option. We propose a method that estimates the value of a design strategy, starting from requirements. This method is based on the probability of change of each requirement as well as of its relative importance. Those parameters will later be traced into better design artifacts. The proposed approach takes into account the cost of each strategy, the probability, or risk, and the cost of introducing a better design solution.