LLMs for Software Design Exploration: Architect’s Augmentation or Replacement?
Speaker: Andres Diaz-Pace, Full Professor at UNICEN University (Tandil, Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Principal Research Fellow of CONICET (Argentina)
When: Tuesday, 24th March, 15:30-16:30
Where: Alan Turing Seminar Room
Abstract: The exploration of software architecture alternatives is a key part of the architecture design process, in which architects normally search and assess solutions for their requirements. In this context, LLM-based techniques, and particularly agents, can help architects to sift through large design spaces and perform a variety of analyses, thus extending the human capabilities. Despite the impressive developments around LLMs, these techniques face adoption challenges. For example, LLMs often generate convincing decisions and analyses in textual format, which are informative but also not always trustable by human architects or aligned with their expectations. In this seminar, I will present some GenAI use cases of LLM-based agents to support architects in the exploration of pattern-based decisions for requirements, the evaluation of the quality-attribute properties of these decisions, and their documentation.
To accomplish their goals, these agents rely on RAG, reflection and agentic workflows, among other techniques. Finally, I will discuss challenges and perspectives for using LLMs in software architecture more effectively, including some future lines of research.
Bio: Andres Diaz-Pace is a full professor at UNICEN University (Tandil, Buenos Aires, Argentina), and a Principal Research Fellow of CONICET, Argentina. He is also a senior AI architect in the private sector. Mr. Diaz-Pace received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UNICEN University in 2004. From 2007 to 2010, he was a member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI, Pittsburgh, USA). His primary research interests are: quality-driven architecture design, AI techniques applied to software design, and architecture-based evolution and conformance. Dr. Diaz-Pace has authored several publications on topics of design assistance and analysis tools. He has participated, as an architecture evaluator or as a lead architect in technology projects in the software industry.
