Software Architect's Handbook

Examples of fitness functions

Fitness functions may come in the form of tests (automated or manual), monitoring, and the collection of metrics. Not all tests are fitness functions. Only those that actually assess a particular architectural characteristic are fitness functions.

For example, fitness functions can be created to calculate and use various software metrics to determine whether a software architecture continues to meet maintainability requirements. In Chapter 4, Software Quality Attributes, we discussed software metrics, such as cyclomatic complexity, lines of code (LOC), and the depth of inheritance tree (DIT) as measurements for maintainability. Fitness functions can allow you to know when a software system has exceeded its predefined ...