How can we put a price on or demonstrate one system architecture against a proposed (or actual) new system architecture? For instance, how can we predict in advance if a major project is going to require a reduction of increase of staff to maintain? Or is it more important that a proposed architecture position a company in a position where it can respond to market pressures with more agility?
I'm currently trying to generate such number to assist our management team with real factual data to support decisions. My problem is - I can't find a lot of material on this subject via Google! So I'm throwing it out there to you guys to give me some ideas.
Here is my basic approach -
1) Find facts we can measure about the hardware environment pre and post project
2) Find facts we can measure about the software architecture pre and post project
3) Segment the companies over 120 software assets into major groupings of 5 areas (trying to analyze 120 product is too fine grained to be of interest).
4) Put all this data into excel, and do a weighted scale matrix for each measure. Total, Graph and Summarize...
I think it will turn out to be easy to demonstrate a "Better" or "Worse" indicator; But I want more - I want an actual score indicator that we can use to determine cost of ownership over time. I want to demonstrate a payback on investment in software architecture that may not be demonstrable through a sexy new website feature.
For the moment - I'm still looking at what variables we can measure (Steps 1 and 2 above). System measurement is basic enough - number of servers, number of upgrades per year, number of helpdesk calls. However software architecture become a little more interesting. Recently I did a quick option analysis and came up with three easier metrics to compare three architectural solutions.
What other metrics have people considered or used in the past when scoring software architecture?
Troy.