Cost Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM)
Challenges:
How do you go about taking economic
considerations into account when designing or modifying a system architecture?
- How do you account for the costs involved?
- How do you characterize and compare the benefits that will accrue to various architectural strategies?
- How can costs and benefits be "traded-off" against quality attributes or functionality?
- How can you characterize the uncertainties involved in your estimates?
Overview:
The Cost
Benefit Analysis Method (CBAM) is an architecture-centric method for
analyzing the costs, benefits, and schedule implications of architectural
decisions. It also assesses the uncertainty surrounding judgements of costs and
benefits, so as to provide a basis for informed decision making about
architectural design/upgrade. The CBAM builds upon the ATAM, although an ATAM
is not an absolute prerequisite.
Benefits:
The CBAM enables users to make informed
software requirement and software investment decisions based upon an analysis
of the economic and architectural implications of those decisions.
Who Would Benefit:
Software product or project
managers, software product line managers, business analysts, software
architects/senior designers.
Description:
The CBAM consists of the following steps:
- Choosing Scenarios and Architectural Strategies
- Assessing QA Benefits
- Quantifying the Architectural Strategies' Benefits
- Quantifying the Architectural Strategies' Costs and Schedule Implications
- Calculate Desirability
- Make Decisions
At the end of the CBAM exercise, we have guided the stakeholders to determine a set of architectural strategies that address their highest priority scenarios. These chosen strategies furthermore represent the optimal set of architectural investments. They are optimal based upon considerations of: benefit, cost, schedule, within the constraints of the elicited uncertainty of these judgements and the willingness of the stakeholders to withstand the risk implied by uncertainty.
Availability:
SEI staff will work with a customer team
to apply the CBAM as needed.
Additional Information:
Contact
us for additional details or to arrange Cost Benefit Analysis Method
services.