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The Archive of Awesome and Dark Tactics (AADT) is an initiative of the Digital Sustainability Center (DiSC). It received funding from the VU Amsterdam Sustainability Institute, and is maintained by the S2 Group of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

The Archive of Awesome and Dark Tactics is a knowledge base of tactics extracted from research and industry practice, that have either a positive or negative effect on a target level of quality. While some tactics can be applied to a specific software artifact, there exist tactics that are focused on other aspects of engineering, such as related hardware components or managerial decisions.

Awesome Tactics are tactics that help achieve a positive effect. Awesome Tactics are a collection of Architectural Tactics (ATs) and Software Practices (SPs). Architectural Tactics are design decisions that influence the achievement of a specific quality attribute response, therefore, they only have one quality attribute as a target. On the other hand, Software Practices can target multiple quality attributes, and can be seen as "best practices" for software developers that can be applied anywhere in the software development process.

Dark Tactics are tactics that when applied, possibly unknowingly, achieve some negative effect. Dark Tactics represent Unsustainable Patterns (UPs); these are patterns that are unsustainable in their nature in a broad sense, in which we include economical, environmental and social concerns. We complement Dark Tactics with a countermeasure, aiming to be a solution for the unsustainable pattern that is presented.

The archive consists of categories of types "Awesome Tactics" and "Dark Tactics". Click the button below or select "Catalog" at the top of the page to open the catalog. Select "Tag Selection" at the top of the page to browse through the tags associated to tactics.