A method to reduce risks in building distributed enterprise systems

A number of risks are associated with building distributed enterprise systems, ranging from functionality to quality attributes. It is critical to identify and reduce these risks early in the development cycle. Current component-based development methods target at improving the precision in the modeling of system functionality based on UML and enhancing reusability through components and frameworks. However, major risks like performance, scalability, and maintainability of distributed systems have not been adequately addressed. In this paper, we propose a method to reduce these risks early in the development cycle. This method consists of three interrelated elements: work model and workload model, architecture-driven component-based development, and architecture analysis and simulation. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this method using the prototype of a factory floor information system.