1. New Products from NASA’s Software Architecture Review Board
Lorraine Fesq
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Flight Software Workshop
October 27-29, 2015
Johns Hopkins University/Applied Physics Laboratory
Annapolis, MD
Copyright 2015 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

2. Mission & Charter of SARB
SARB was established by NASA OCE in April 2009
Mission:
Manage flight software complexity through better software architecture
Charter
Provide constructive feedback to flight projects in the formative stages of software architecting
Focus on architectural improvements to reduce and/or better manage complexity in requirements, design, implementation, verification, and operations
Spread best architectural practices, principles, and patterns across flight software centers
Contribute to NASA Lessons Learned

3. NASA Software Architecture Reviews
Objectives
Manage and/or reduce flight software complexity through better software architecture
Help improve mission software reliability and save costs
Plan
Prepare introductory document, review process, review checklist, documentation recommendations, and sample problem statement
Educate team on process
Practice on flown missions
Conduct real reviews
Approach
Create a NASA-wide software architecture review board (SARB)
Engage with flight projects in the formative stages of software architecture

4. SARB Team Members (as of October 2015)
Name
Expertise / Position
Affiliation
Michael Aguilar
Sponsor and NESC Software Discipline Expert, NASA Technical Fellow in Software
NESC
Dan Dvorak
SARB co-Lead, Integrated Model-Centric Engineering (IMCE) team
JPL
Lorraine Fesq
SARB co-Lead, Fault Management Community of Practice Lead, 3101
Ken Costello
Aerospace and Software engineer, IV&V Program Chief Architect
IV&V
Michael Madden
Chief Scientist, Simulation Development and Analysis Branch
LaRC
Darrel Raines
Orion Flight Software System Manager
JSC
John Weir
FSW Lead for Space Launch System (and formerly, Ares I)
MSFC
Kathryn Weiss
Senior Flight Software Engineer, JPL Flight Software Product Line Cognizant Engineer
Jonathan Wilmot
Software architect, Flight Software Branch
GSFC

5. SARB Community of Practice Page https://nen.nasa.gov/web/sarb

6. SARB Documents Located on “Preparation for Review” page on SARB CoP
Contextually Driven Architecture Reviews (outreach)
Project Problem Statement template
Preparing for a Software Architecture Review
Reference Architecture Questions
Architecture Review Checklist
Scope of Architectural Concerns
Quality Attributes Table

7. Recommended Contents for Software Architecture Descriptions
SARB advises starting with the SEI Template for a SW ADD, in conjunction with the following to address concerns/characteristics specific to the NASA FSW domain
Architecture Terminology
Mission Overview
Context Diagram, Context Description
Architectural Drivers
Critical Resources & Margins
Stakeholders & Concerns
Quality Attribute Analysis
Measures of Performance
Architectural Decisions & Rationale
Architectural Alternatives (Trade Studies)
Multiple Views
Diagrams and Legends
Architectural Frameworks
Heritage Analysis/Software Reuse
Assumptions & Limitations
Architectural Patterns, Principles, Invariants, Rules
Fault Management
Non-Concerns
References
SEI Template for Software Architecture Documentation
Full document available at

8. SARB Documents Located on “Preparation for Review” page on SARB CoP
Contextually Driven Architecture Reviews (outreach)
Project Problem Statement template
Preparing for a Software Architecture Review
Reference Architecture Questions
Architecture Review Checklist
Scope of Architectural Concerns
Quality Attributes Table

9. Quality Attributes Table
The Quality Attribute Table contains software architecture quality attributes that are relevant to the mission-critical real-time embedded systems.
Full document available at

10. Quality Attributes Table – excerpt

11. Quality Attributes Table Use Cases
The QA Table has at least three primary use cases
Use by a software architect and project team to evaluate the priorities of each QA for a specific project.
Use during development – Developers implementing the architecture need to be mindful of the “Tactic to achieve”, “Evidence of/verification”, “Project Prioritization”, and “Project intended variation” columns for each attribute during the design and coding process
Use in the review process to evaluate a software architecture with respect to each QA in the Table and the priorities established by the project
Full document available at

12. SARB is a NASA-provided resource
SARB is available to NASA projects “Free of charge” for reviews
Review feedback is provided to project only – handled confidentially/discreetly
Encourage your project to conduct a software architecture review before PDR
After PDR, it’s hard to make any substantive changes
Inquire about a review at or