Managing Trade-offs in Adaptable Software Architectures

Foreword by Rogério de Lemos

Although the reasoning of software systems at the architectural level provides an effective way to handle complexity, the emerging area of self-adaptive software systems is challenging traditional approaches on how to develop, operate, and evolve software systems. However, at the same time that current practices are being challenged, opportunities emerge regarding new application areas for software system that are flexible when handling change (which may affect the system itself, its environment, or its requirements). Associated with changes, inevitably, there are uncertainties that need to be identified, analyzed, and handled, and this is the purposes of trade-off analysis in systems design. In the context of ...