This presentation was created for the SATURN conference series and does not necessarily reflect the positions and views of the Software Engineering Institute.
Information technology (IT) architects know how hard
it is to collect architectural information in an engagement and keep it
all clear and organized in their minds. Transforming that information
into the models of a viable architecture and keeping associated work
products consistent and up-to-date is an even greater challenge.
Despite this, model-centric architectural methods are not as widely
adopted or as closely followed as they could be, partly due to a lack
of appropriate tools. Architects’ Workbench (AWB) is prototype
technology that addresses these problems and supports the creative
process of architectural thinking and modeling.
We present key AWB innovations and discuss how their design was
motivated by insights into architectural work and feedback from IT
architects. We describe the design of AWB itself as a metamodel-driven
and method-based tool, we report on experience from the use of AWB in
production environments, we discuss productivity and quality gains
arising out of the use of AWB, and we present lessons learned
concerning tool support for IT architecture.
