Software Architectures as Organizational Structures

Abstract

This paper proposes a set of concepts for describing a software architecture as an organization. These social structures consist of actors who have goals to fulfil and social dependencies describing their obligations. The framework is an adaptation of i* [Yu95] proposed as a modeling language for early requirements. Based on this framework, the paper advocates architectural styles for software which adopt concepts from organization theory and strategic alliances literature. The styles are modeled in i* and formalized in terms of Telos metaconcepts. Each proposed style is evaluated with respect to a set of software quality attributes, such as predictability, adaptability and openness. The use of these styles is illustrated and contrasted with a software architecture for mobile robots reported in the literature. 1.