Pattern (reusable) assets classification

Reusable software assets represent significant IP in terms of lessons learned from previous engagements and can to address both functional and non-functional requirement (e.g. a performance non-functional requirement could be addressed using the requester side caching pattern asset). However, because assets are not currently cataloged against meaningful criteria, such as functional and or non-functional requirement, they are often not leveraged or reused effectively by architects to help make more consistent architectural decisions.

The importance of Architecture in an SOA can not be overstated. Yet when it comes to making architectural decisions in our software labs or on engagements there is often no consistency, tractability or accountability in terms of the decisions made. These architectural decisions are driven by non-functional requirements (e.g. performance, transactionality, tractability, scalability, etc).

Assets such as software patterns assets are often represented by many assets such as a pattern specification and/or pattern implementations and these assets are often hard to locate because of this lack of consistent and meaningful cataloging. Also the knowledge and use of a asset, such as an industry model asset is often local to a particular practitioner or architect. This leads us to a situation both in software development labs and more importantly on field engagement where is no consistency way of consuming assets and leveraging lessons learned to achieving architectural consistency traceability and accountability.

Below is a meta model that shows how reusable assets can be used to create a solution and goes into more detail and classification around a particular type of reusable asset: the software pattern reusable asset.