Classification of Design Decisions – An Expert Survey in Practice

Miesbauer, Cornelia; Weinreich, Rainer

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39031-9_12

Cited by 29 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The presented study is an extension of a previous study performed with software architects in Austria [13]. We have described the research approach in more detail and, most importantly, extended the original study by increasing the sample size and by including study participants from additional nine countries in Europe and the United States to address the threat of locality (cf.…”

Section: Comparison With Previous Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The presented study is an extension of a (more limited) study that has been performed with software architects from Austria [13] (see Section 6.7 for a discussion of the differences with this previous study). The survey presented here has been performed with 25 software architects, software team leads, and senior developers from 22 different companies in 10 different countries with, on average, more than 13 years of experience in software development.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An expert survey on kinds, influence factors and documentation of design decisions in practice

Weinreich

Groher

Miesbauer

2015

Future Generation Computer Systems

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Section: Comparison With Previous Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An expert survey on kinds, influence factors and documentation of design decisions in practice

Weinreich

Groher

Miesbauer

2015

Future Generation Computer Systems

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“…GADGET was motivated by noticing that most architectural decisions are made in groups [3,4] and that little research exists on group architectural decisions [5]. Consensus is conceptualized in terms of its two main components: general agreement and mutual understanding.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Phase 1 consists of previous work that motivated the research in this paper. While investigating how architectural decisions are made in practice [3], we found out that most architectural decisions are group decisions, similar to [4]. Furthermore, one of the outcomes of a systematic mapping study on architectural decisions literature was that there is little research on group architectural decisions [5].…”

Section: Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Empirical evaluation of a process to increase consensus in group architectural decision making

Tofan

Galster

Lytra

et al. 2016

Information and Software Technology

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Context: Many software architectural decisions are group decisions rather than decisions made by individuals. Consensus in a group of decision makers increases the acceptance of a decision among decision makers and their confidence in that decision. Furthermore, going through the process of reaching consensus means that decision makers understand better the decision (including the decision topic, decision options, rationales, and potential outcomes). Little guidance exists on how to increase consensus in group architectural decision making.Objective: We evaluate how a newly proposed process (named GADGET) helps architects increase consensus when making group architectural decisions. Specifically, we investigate how well GADGET increases consensus in group architectural decision making, by understanding its practical applicability, and by comparing GADGET against group architectural decision making without using any prescribed approach.Method: We conducted two empirical studies. First, we conducted an exploratory case study to understand the practical applicability of GADGET in industry. We investigated whether there is a need to increase consensus, the effort and benefits of GADGET, and potential improvements for GADGET. Second, we conducted an experiment with 113 students from three universities to compare GADGET against group architectural decision making without using any prescribed approach.Results: GADGET helps decision makers increase their consensus, captures knowledge on architectural decisions, clarifies the different points of view of different decision makers on the decision, and increases the focus of the group discussions about a decision. From the experiment, we obtained causal evidence that GADGET increases consensus better than group architectural decision making without using any prescribed approach.Conclusions: There is a need to increase consensus in group architectural decisions. GADGET helps inexperienced architects increase consensus in group architectural decision making, and provides additional benefits, such as capturing rationale of decisions. Future work is needed to understand and improve other aspects of group architectural decision making.

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Factors affecting architectural decision‐making process and challenges in software projects: An industrial survey

Demir,

Chouseinoglou,

Tarhan

2024

J Software Evolu Process

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Software architecture plays a fundamental role in overcoming the challenges of the development process of large‐scale and complex software systems. The software architecture of a system is the result of an extensive process in which several stakeholders negotiate issues and solutions, and as a result of this negotiation, a series of architectural decisions are made. This survey study aims to determine the experiences of the software industry experts with respect to architectural decision‐making, the factors that are effective in decision‐making, and the technical and social problems they encounter. An online questionnaire‐based survey was conducted with 101 practitioners. The responses were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Analysis of responses revealed that the majority of the participants prefer to document some or all of the architectural decisions taken and to store these documents in web‐based collaboration software. Decisions are usually made by teams of two or three, and discussion‐based approaches (brainstorming and consensus) are adopted. In the software architecture decision‐making process, “major business impact” is the most challenging situation. Information sharing and keeping track of decisions and decision rationale are areas in need of improvement as identified by most participants. From the participants' feedback and their answers to open‐ended questions, we concluded that the software architecture decision‐making process has an important role in the industry. Our key findings are that decisions made in the architectural decision‐making process are taken by teams and generally all decisions are documented. In projects where decisions are made by a single person, peer pressure is found to be significantly different from pressure in projects where decisions are made by the group. This is an indication that as the number of people in the decision‐making process increases, the disagreements also increase.

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Classification of Design Decisions – An Expert Survey in Practice

Cited by 29 publications

References 15 publications

An expert survey on kinds, influence factors and documentation of design decisions in practice

An expert survey on kinds, influence factors and documentation of design decisions in practice

Empirical evaluation of a process to increase consensus in group architectural decision making

Factors affecting architectural decision‐making process and challenges in software projects: An industrial survey

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