An Architectural Process for Achieving Robustness

Abstract

As our reliance on software has increased, robustness has become an important subject. Software that is not robust enough may lead to frustration, or loss of time or value. Software architecture forms the main structures of applications. Having focus on the quality of an applications architecture may increase the robustness of the application. This thesis tries to find a suitable architectural process for achieving robustness. I report on the findings from ten interviews with software architects from the software industry, around the theme robustness. Interview results are used in order to form a definition of robustness which is wider than the definitions I found in literature. The thesis's main contribution is a proposed process for designing and analyzing robust software architectures that make use of elements from existing methods. The proposed process is grounded on results from interviews, personal experience, and evaluation of existing methods in literature.