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Utility Tree Interactive Explorer

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About This MicroSim

This MicroSim presents a complete utility tree for a healthcare patient-portal system as an indented, expandable outline. It shows the four levels of every utility tree — the gold root (overall Utility), blue quality attribute branches, teal sub-attribute nodes, and leaf scenarios — and gives each leaf a color-coded (Importance, Difficulty) rating badge. Clicking a leaf explains why it earned its rating, which is the skill the chapter is teaching: interpreting ratings to find the scenarios that deserve priority analytical attention.

How to Use

  1. Expand and collapse any node by clicking it (or use Expand All / Collapse All).
  2. Read the rating badges on the leaves. The color tells you the priority class: red (H,H) is analyze first, orange is high-value, gold is a quick win, blue is secondary, gray is monitor-only.
  3. Click a leaf scenario to open the detail panel, which shows its branch → sub-attribute path, its rating label, and a one-sentence rationale for the Importance and Difficulty.
  4. Focus (H,H) hides every lower-priority leaf so the critical set across the whole tree stands out.

Iframe Embed Code

You can add this MicroSim to any web page by adding this to your HTML:

<iframe src="https://dmccreary.github.io/atam/sims/utility-tree-explorer/main.html"
        width="100%"
        scrolling="no"></iframe>

Lesson Plan

Grade Level

Undergraduate / Professional

Duration

10-15 minutes

Prerequisites

None beyond an introduction to quality attributes.

Bloom's Taxonomy Level

Understand (L2)

Learning Objective

Students will be able to identify each level of a utility tree (root, quality attribute branch, sub-attribute node, leaf scenario), interpret the importance and difficulty ratings, and explain why (H,H) scenarios receive priority analytical attention.

Activities

  1. Name the levels (4 min): Students click through the tree and label an example of each of the four levels.
  2. Interpret ratings (5 min): Students open three different leaves and explain, in their own words, why each pair of ratings makes sense.
  3. Focus (4 min): Students click Focus (H,H) and list the critical scenarios, then explain why those five would be analyzed first.

Assessment

Give students an unrated leaf scenario and ask them to assign and justify an (Importance, Difficulty) rating consistent with the examples in the tree.

References

  1. Bass, L., Clements, P., & Kazman, R. (2021). Software Architecture in Practice (4th ed.). Addison-Wesley.
  2. Kazman, R., Klein, M., & Clements, P. (2000). ATAM: Method for Architecture Evaluation (CMU/SEI-2000-TR-004).