Team-Driven Architecture Evaluation with LASR

Software architecture evaluation methods such as ATAM have proven effective but many require external facilitation, substantial preparation, follow-up work or do not fit fast-paced industrial development efforts.
This paper presents LASR, the Lightweight Approach for Software Reviews that enables development teams to run systematic, quality-focused architecture evaluations in a single half-day session. LASR is self-contained and team-driven, allowing 2-4 developers to perform the review without separate evaluation support. We position LASR among existing architecture evaluation approaches and report on its industrial application across different domains. Based on data from 75 independently conducted reviews, we discuss the method’s effectiveness, typical usage patterns, and practical limitations.
The results indicate that LASR delivers actionable, repeatable insights with modest effort and offers a pragmatic addition to the current spectrum of architecture evaluation methods.