Annotating problem diagrams with architectural tactics for reasoning on quality requirements

We defend that one important but largely unexploited application of models is to allow engineers to reason at a higher level of abstraction than that provided by programming languages and implementation technologies. In particular, we show how Jacksonʼs problem diagrams, annotated with architectural tactics, provide a vocabulary for reasoning informally about the satisfaction of quality requirements. We illustrate our hypothesis with a case study extracted from a real system.

► We stress the importance of models for reasoning.
► We annotate problem diagrams with architectural tactics and quality requirements.
► We propose an argumentation scheme based on tactics and domain properties.
► Our technique is applied to argue some architectural decisions in a real case study.