Enhancing Architecture Design Methods for Improved Flexibility in Long-Living Information Systems

Abstract

Nearly all organizations in business are highly relying on information systems. As business, business models, organizational structures, and business processes are changing quickly, also information systems have to follow these changes, otherwise they threaten the business success. A key quality attribute of software systems, which is defined to capture the needs for change, is flexibility. Although many of today’s IT paradigms like service-oriented architecture or business rule management claim to bring flexibility into information systems, this is often not achieved in practice, as experience shows. This paper explores in more detail the nature of flexibility and proposes an extension to architecture design processes, which allows constructing systems with flexibility directed at the real needs. It makes flexibility more tangible and gives concrete guidance for treating flexibility during architecture design.