Software Engineering Institute Carnegie Mellon

Thesis/Dissertation Topics in Software Architecture

Software architecture provides a rich source of topics for theses and dissertations. On this page, researchers and educators can propose topics and let students browse the list and, if interested, make contact. If a topic you posted is no longer available, notify us.

Submitted topics:

Title: A survey of the duties, skills, and knowledge of software architects.
Brief description: This project is to conduct a survey of public sources of knowledge aimed at software architects: web sites, books, blogs, essays, academic and industrial courses, certificate/certification programs, architects' resume's, architect position description descriptions, and so forth. The goal is capture the duties, skills, and knowledge that these sources imply a software architect should have. The researcher will have to find a way to organize and present the information in a digestible way. During data capture, no attempt should be made to merge duplicate items; instead, capture each piece of advice as it is stated. An affinity exercise can be used to clump related items once the data is assembled.
Level (Undergraduate, Masters, Ph.D., etc.): Masters.
Date submitted: 1 August 2007
For more information contact: Paul Clements (clements@sei.cmu.edu)

Title: A tool to support QAW, ADD, Views and Beyond, and ATAM.
Brief description: This is a project thesis, the purpose of which is to build a tool (preferably Eclipse-based) to facilitate the capture, organization, recall, and use of information critical to successful architecture development. The information includes stakeholders, quality attribute scenarios, an architecture documentation template, architecture patterns and tactics, architecture rationale, and the like.
Level (Undergraduate, Masters, Ph.D., etc.): Masters. Possibly a project topic for an advanced software engineering class.
Date submitted: 1 August 2007
For more information contact: Paul Clements (clements@sei.cmu.edu)

Title: Compare architecture documentation approaches.
Brief description: The task is to take a software architecture for a challenging problem, and document it using each of (a) "plain" UML as supported in a commercial tool; (b) AADL (see www.aadl.info); (c) SEI's Views and Beyond approach; (d) documentation as prescribed by IEEE Standard 1471-2000 / ISO-IEC 42010-2000. The ultimate goal is to draw qualitative conclusions about the strengths and weaknesses of each.
Level (Undergraduate, Masters, Ph.D., etc.): Masters
Date submitted: 1 August 2007
For more information contact: Paul Clements (clements@sei.cmu.edu)

Title: Research in extending the set of architectural tactics
Brief description: Take a list of "architectural approaches" collected from the body of SEI-administered ATAM exercises, and map each one of them to the set of architectural tactics outlined in Software Architecture in Practice, 2nd edition. Draw conclusions about the adequacy of the given set of tactics, and be prepared to propose new ones, eliminate redundant ones, or suggest new combinations.
Level (Undergraduate, Masters, Ph.D., etc.): Masters
Date submitted: 1 August 2007
For more information contact: Paul Clements (clements@sei.cmu.edu)

Title: Case study in using Attribute Driven Design (ADD)
Brief description: Use the Attribute Driven Design method (ADD) to design an architecture for a given system. Keep track of the process, the sticking points, and provide an overall assessment of the method and its strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate the resulting architecture using ATAM to see how well it satisfies its requirements.
Level (Undergraduate, Masters, Ph.D., etc.): Masters
Date submitted: 1 August 2007
For more information contact: Paul Clements (clements@sei.cmu.edu)

Title: Mapping quality attributes gathered "in the field" to general quality attribute scenarios
Brief description: The Software Engineering Institute has performed dozens of ATAM exercises over the years, and we have collected the quality attribute scenarios that each one has produced. This task is to map each quality attribute scenario to the set of concrete quality attribute scenarios (described in the previous task) and to produce some measure of how well they correspond.
Level (Undergraduate, Masters, Ph.D., etc.): Masters
Date submitted: 1 August 2007
For more information contact: Paul Clements (clements@sei.cmu.edu)