The software architecture is one of the most crucial artifacts within the lifecycle of a software system. Decisions made at the architectural level directly enable, facilitate, hamper, or interfere with the achievement of business goals, functional and quality requirements. Architecture evaluations play an important role in the development and evolution of software systems since they determine how adequate the architecture is for its intended usage. This paper summarizes our practical experience with using architecture evaluations and gives an overview on when and how static architecture evaluations contribute to architecture development. We identify ten distinct purposes and needs for static architecture evaluations and illustrate them using a set of industrial and academic case studies. In particular, we show how subsequent steps in architecture development are influenced by the results from architecture evaluations

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Software architecture has become an established discipline in industry. Nevertheless, the available documentation of architecture is often not perceived as adequate by developers. As a foundation for the improvement of methods and tools around architecture documentation, we conducted a survey with 147 industrial participants, investigating their current problems and wishes for the future. Participants from different countries in Europe, Asia, North and South America shared their experiences. This paper presents the results of the survey. The results confirmed the common belief that architecture documentation is most frequently outdated and inconsistent and backed it up with data. Further, developers perceive difficulties with a "one-size-fits-all" architecture documentation, which does not adequately provide information for their specific task and context. Developers seek for more interactive ways of working with architecture documentation that allow finding needed information more easily with extended navigation and search possibilities.

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Thorough and continuous architecting is the key to overall success in software engineering, and architecture evaluation is a crucial part of it. This book presents a pragmatic architecture evaluation approach and insights gained from its application in more than 75 projects with industrial customers in the past decade. It presents context factors, empirical data, and example cases, as well as lessons learned on mitigating the risk of change through architecture evaluation. By providing comprehensive answers to more than 100 typical questions and discussing more than 60 frequent mistakes and lessons learned, the book allows readers to not only learn how to conduct architecture evaluations and interpret its results, but also to become aware of risks such as false conclusions, manipulating data, and unsound lines of argument. It equips readers to become confident in assessing quantitative measurement results and recognize when it is better to rely on qualitative expertise. The target readership includes both practitioners and researchers. By demonstrating its impact and providing clear guidelines, data, and examples, it encourages practitioners to conduct architecture evaluations. At the same time, it offers researchers insights into industrial architecture evaluations, which serve as the basis for guiding research in this area and will inspire future research directions