With the growing number of software architectural evolution methods, the need to develop a framework based on well defined dimensions to analyse approaches is now a prerequisite for practitioners in order to analyse, compare and classify methods within the field of architectural evolution. In this paper, we propose an evolution framework based on six dimensions for analysing, comparing and classifying existing and future evolution methods. The proposed architectural evolution framework adopts Zachman analytic tool (answering what, why, where, who, when and how questions). The framework relies upon identifying dimensions that researchers would take into account while developing a new evolution approach. The set of the proposed dimensions whether combined or individually can serve as a basis to explore further classification paradigms. The proposed framework is supported by an empirical study that involves surveying and analysing 119 research methods related to the area of architectural evolution.