What are the best practices for evaluating software design artifacts?

1 Define evaluation goals

Before you start evaluating your software design artifacts, you need to define your evaluation goals and scope. What are the main questions you want to answer, the criteria you want to use, and the stakeholders you want to involve? For example, you may want to evaluate how well your design supports the functional and non-functional requirements of your system, how easy it is to understand and modify, how reusable and scalable it is, or how it adheres to the standards and conventions of your domain. Your evaluation goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

2 Choose evaluation methods

When evaluating software design artifacts, you can select from a variety of methods. Peer review is a popular option, as it allows other software designers or developers to review the design and provide feedback. Heuristic evaluation applies predefined rules to the design artifacts in order to make sure they comply with best practices and standards. Metrics evaluation measures and quantifies certain aspects of the design, such as complexity and maintainability. Finally, simulation or prototyping involves creating a simplified or partial implementation of the design and testing it with real or simulated data. Each of these methods can help you identify errors, validate feasibility, and benchmark your design against other alternatives.

3 Collect evaluation data

Once you have chosen your evaluation methods, you need to collect the data that will help you answer your evaluation questions and criteria. Depending on the type and level of detail of your design artifacts, you may need to use different tools and techniques to collect your evaluation data. For instance, code analysis tools can provide metrics, reports, or diagrams to measure the cyclomatic complexity, coupling, or cohesion of your design components. Documentation tools can also generate UML diagrams, API specifications, or user manuals. Additionally, testing tools can help test your design artifacts or their implementation using unit testing, integration testing, or performance testing. Finally, feedback tools can be used to collect feedback from peers, users, or clients on your design artifacts or their implementation through surveys, interviews, or usability tests.

4 Analyze evaluation data

Once you have collected your evaluation data, you need to analyze it and draw conclusions. To do this, you must use appropriate methods and techniques to interpret, synthesize, and present the data in a clear and meaningful way. This could include statistical methods to calculate the mean, median, or standard deviation of metrics, or qualitative methods to perform content analysis or thematic analysis on feedback. Additionally, visualization methods can be used to display and explore the data using graphical elements like charts, graphs, tables, or maps. For example, you could create dashboards, histograms, scatter plots, or heat maps from your evaluation data.

5 Communicate evaluation results

Finally, you need to communicate your evaluation results to your stakeholders and justify your design decisions based on them. To do this effectively, you may need to use reports, presentations, and demonstrations. Reports are written documents that summarize and explain your evaluation goals, methods, data, analysis, and results. Presentations are oral or visual presentations that highlight and illustrate your evaluation goals, methods, data, analysis, and results. Demonstrations are practical or interactive demonstrations that showcase and validate your design artifacts or their implementation. All of these can help document and share your evaluation process and outcomes with your stakeholders. Additionally, they can engage and persuade your stakeholders with your evaluation findings and recommendations as well as prove and impress them with your design functionality and usability.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?