Difficulties and challenges in the incorporation of architectural practices

Abstract

The architecture software has become a key asset for software organizations because it facilitates achieving quality goals and developing of easy evolvable products. However, in small organizations, software architecture is usually a vague idea about the structure of solution. In this paper, a case of applying several me-thods of architecture (QAW, ADD and VaB) with small teams constituted by software developers, during a course of software development, is presented. Some difficulties to trace and correctly document the rationale associated with quality attributes, tactics architectural and selected patterns, were identified. It was established the difficulty of following an architectural process and to letconsistent evidence about that, especially when the same specification generates conflict between the established attributes and tactics and patterns that going establishing.

The architecture software has become a key asset for software organizations because it facilitates achieving quality goals and developing of easy evolvable products. However, in small organizations, software architecture is usually a vague idea about the structure of solution. In this paper, a case of applying several me-thods of architecture (QAW, ADD and VaB) with small teams constituted by software developers, during a course of software development, is presented. Some difficulties to trace and correctly document the rationale associated with quality attributes, tactics architectural and selected patterns, were identified. It was established the difficulty of following an architectural process and to letconsistent evidence about that, especially when the same specification generates conflict between the established attributes and tactics and patterns that going establishing.