Reasoning on Architecture Design

Abstract

Design reasoning stimulates effective architecture documentation through rationale capture. Architects are found to produce, on average, better architectures by explicitly reasoning about their design decisions. The key goal of this thesis is to effectively embed design reasoning principles into architecture design and measure its effects. During this thesis the Rationale Capture Cycle (RCC) is designed, a reasoning structure model that guides design reasoning and stimulates rationale capture. The data was able to demonstrate rationale capture can be stimulated by using a rationale structure model to support reasoning. The RCC was found to be very influential. A positive effect was observed through expert evaluations, the quality of rationale documentation and the design experience of the architect when the Rationale Capture Cycle is utilized. Various different tests and results cohesively point towards the same result as the degree of agr eement between the different tests are high. Therefore, reasoning can be stimulated by using a reasoning structure model during architecture design. This way, design reasoning principles can be embedded into the architecture process and its beneficial effects measured and demonstrated.