Scenario-Based Architecture Evaluation Methods
I'm a fan of scenarios. Whether you use scenarios for scenario-driven development, scenario-based evaluations, competitive assessments or for shaping products ... scenarios are where the rubber meets the road. I think scenarios are particularly effective for evaluating architectures and for making architecture trade-off decisions. I wrote a short post on Shaping Software that reiterates a mantra I frequently use ... you can't evaluate architecture in a vacuum.