An Economic Model for Software Architecture Decisions

Software architecture is touted as essential for system development, but its benefits are almost never quantified. Further, architects are faced with decisions about architecture (such as deciding when an architecture has outlived its usefulness) that should be answered on an economic basis. This paper presents an simple economic modeling language that has been useful in the realm of software product lines, and argues that a similar language would be equally useful in the realm of architecture decision-making.