Contextual factors of architectural strategy for complex systems

Abstract

© Springer International Publishing AG 2017. Architecture is the “backbone” of every software product, regardless of the development process used. However, its role, significance, and development strategies differ from one software development process to another. Traditional architecture development, based on a well-defined architectural process that involves the three following architectural phases–architectural analysis, synthesis, and evaluation–is based on the Big Design Up Front strategy. In agile development, architecture is generated gradually with each iteration, as a result of continuous code refactoring, not some predefined structure. Therefore, agile software development relies on an opposite extreme architectural strategy, emergent architecture. The research topic of this paper is focused on the development of architecture for modern complex systems, which cannot be based on either of the two aforementioned extreme architectural strategies. Development of an architectural strategy for a complex system is significantly influenced by contextual factors. This paper presents the results of a qualitative empirical research, carried out on a sample of 20 expert practitioners. The results represent contextual factors that the practitioners–surveyed respondents–consider when deciding to which extent will the emergent strategy be extended with explicit architectural practices typical to the traditional architecture development. Obtained results suggest that agile practitioners scale up agile processes, in terms of architecture development, with regard to the contextual factors of the system being developed.