Consistent Inconsistency Management: A Concern-Driven Approach

Abstract

During the development of a software system, architects deal with a large number of stakeholders, each with differing concerns. This inevitably leads to inconsistency: goals, concerns, design decisions, and models are interrelated and overlapping. Existing approaches to support inconsistency management are limited in their applicability and usefulness in day to day practice due to the presence of incomplete, informal and heterogeneous models in software architecture. This paper presents a novel process in the form of a lightweight generic method, the Concern-Driven Inconsistency Management (CDIM) method, that is designed to address limitations of different related approaches. It aims to aid architects with management of intangible inconsistency in software architecture.