Architectural Debt Management in Value-oriented Architecting

Architectural technical debt (ATD) may be incurred when making architecture decisions. In most cases, ATD is not effectively managed in the architecting process: It is not made explicit, and architecture decision making does not consider the ATD incurred by the different design options. This chapter proposes a conceptual model of ATD and an architectural technical debt management process applying this ATD conceptual model in order to facilitate decision making in a value-oriented perspective of architecting. We also demonstrate how ATD management can be employed in architectural synthesis and evaluation in a case study. The contribution of this work provides a controllable and predictable balance between the value and cost of architecture design in the long term.