Paper Info
Title
An expert survey on kinds, influence factors and documentation of design decisions in practice
Abstract
Support for capturing architectural knowledge has been identified as an important research challenge. As the basis for an approach to recovering design decisions and capturing their rationale, we performed an expert survey in practice to gain insights into the different kinds, influence factors, and sources for design decisions and also into how they are currently captured in practice. The survey was conducted with 25 software architects, software team leads, and senior developers from 22 different companies in 10 different countries with more than 13 years of experience in software development on average. The survey confirms earlier work by other authors on design decision classification and influence factors, and also identifies additional kinds of decisions and influence factors not mentioned in previous work. In addition, we gained insight into the practice of capturing, the relative importance of different decisions and influence factors, and into potential sources for recovering decisions. We present results of a qualitative expert survey on design decisions in practice.We examine design decision classification, documentation, and influence factors.We collect architects' experiences in decision making and documentation.We provide recommendations for potential improvements and research directions based on the results of our study.Results are compared to literature and similar studies.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1016/j.future.2014.12.002
Future Generation Computer Systems
Keywords
Field
DocType
Software architecture knowledge management,Design decisions,Design decision classification,Design decision influence factors,Design decision documentation
Computer science,Knowledge management,Business decision mapping,Software architecture knowledge management,Software,Documentation,Software development
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
47
C
0167-739X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
11
0.57
22
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Rainer Weinreich123727.10
Iris Groher234127.43
Cornelia Miesbauer3402.48