Architects, Jugglers, and Quality Attributes

Architects are like jugglers. No, that's not because we operate in a circus (although some projects seem to be marginal in that sense). Architect's are like jugglers because in the same way jugglers try to keep several balls up in the air at once, we have to keep all those quality attributes -- performance, security, flexibility, etc.-- without letting any of them fall.

If you are a good architect, you might be able to keep five balls up in the air in the same time and maybe throw in a couple of Torches for good measure. If you are a great architect, maybe you can handle 10 or 15. In any event, there's a limit to the number of quality attributes you can balance in the same time and that's were we should really shine -- in the tradeoffs.

What I am going to do over the next few posts is to take a look at quality attributes (and their sub-categories) as well as look at some of the forces and common trade-offs.

I am currently planning on having posts on:

• Performance
• Security
• Availability
• Scalability
• Manageability
• Testability
• Flexibility
• Reliability
• and maybe a few more

Let me know if there are any quality attributes you want me to address which aren't on this list.

Posted by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz at 12:49 PM  Permalink