Software architecture critics in the Argo design environment

Software architectures are high-level design representations of software sy stems which focus on composition of software components and how those compo nents interact. Software architectures abstract the details of implementati on and allow the designer to focus on essential design decisions. Regardles s of notation, designers are faced with the task of making good design deci sions which demand a broad range of knowledge of the problem and solution d omains. In this paper we describe Argo, a software architecture design envi ronment that supports designers by addressing several cognitive challenges of design. Argo's critiquing infrastructure supports decision making by aut omatically supplying knowledge that is timely and relevant to decisions at hand. Our discussion centers on a five-phase critiquing process that we use to motivate Argo's features, structure a usage scenario and characterize r elated work. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.