The SEI has been engaged in the following research areas.

Architecture Competence

The SEI has developed models that can be applied to evaluate and improve the architecture capabilities and competence of individuals and organizations.

Architecture Conformance

The SEI has investigated technologies and practices that help organizations ensure that their implementation of a system conforms to the system's architecture.

Architecture Evolution

The SEI has researched how organizations can manage future uncertainty by planning for system evolution and evaluating systems-of-systems architecture.

Quality Attributes and Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA)

The SEI has examined the relationship between service-oriented architectures (SOAs) and quality attributes.

Architecture Reconstruction

The SEI has researched current commercial and research tools that help organizations perform architecture reconstruction to retrieve the "as-built" architecture of an implemented legacy system.

Software Architecture and Acquisition

The SEI has collaborated with DoD acquisition organizations and their contractors to transition and apply architecture-centric software development approaches in an acquisition context.

Software Architecture Life-Cycle Integration

The SEI has researched how to integrate SEI architecture evaluation and design methods into an organization's life cycle for developing architecture-based software.