In software engineering, Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (ATAM) is a risk-mitigation process used early in the software development life cycle.
ATAM was developed by the Software Engineering Institute at the Carnegie Mellon University. Its purpose is to help choose a suitable architecture for a software system by discovering trade-offs and sensitivity points.
ATAM is most beneficial when done early in the software development life-cycle when the cost of changing architectures is minimal.