A framework for supporting the software architecture evaluation process in global software development

Software Architecture (SA) evaluation process requires a large number of stakeholders to be collocated for evaluation sessions. Given the increasing trend of using globally distributed software development teams, organizations are likely to be discouraged from introducing disciplined architectural evaluation practices that require stakeholders to be collocated. To address this issue, we propose that SA evaluation can be carried out using suitable groupware systems. In this paper, we present a framework for supporting the SA evaluation process using groupware systems. The framework highlights the changes required in the existing SA evaluation processes. We provide an illustrated example of modeling and mapping the activities of the proposed process on electronic workspaces provided by a groupware system. We have also identified some of the features a groupware system should have to successfully support the process.