Software Architect's Handbook

Attribute-driven design (ADD)

Attribute-driven design (ADD) is one of the systematic approaches for designing software architectures. It is an iterative, organized, step-by-step method that can be followed during architectural design iterations.

This method pays particular attention to software quality attributes during the design process. As a result, one of the primary benefits of using ADD is that you begin to consider quality attributes early in the design process.

Enabling a quality attribute in a software architecture design may affect other quality attributes. Consequently, trade-offs between quality attributes may be necessary. By focusing on quality attributes using the ADD method, these types of trade-offs can be considered at an ...