TY - GEN
T1 - Architectural technical debt
T2 - 14th European Conference on Software Architecture, ECSA 2020
AU - Verdecchia, Roberto
AU - Kruchten, Philippe
AU - Lago, Patricia
PY - 2020
Y1 - 2020
N2 - Architectural technical debt in a software-intensive system is driven by design decisions about its structure, frameworks, technologies, languages, etc. Unlike code-level technical debt, which can be readily detected by static analysers, and can often be refactored with minimal efforts, architectural debt is hard to detect, and its remediation is wide-ranging, daunting, and often avoided. The objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of how software development organisations conceptualize their architectural debt, and how they deal with it, if at all. We used a grounded theory method, eliciting qualitative data from software architects and senior technical staff from a wide range of software development organizations. The result of the study, i.e., the theory emerging from the collected data, constitutes an encompassing conceptual theory of architectural debt, identifying and relating concepts such as symptoms, causes, consequences, and management strategies. By grounding the findings in empirical data, the theory provides researchers and practitioners with evidence of which crucial factors of architectural technical debt are experienced in industrial contexts.
AB - Architectural technical debt in a software-intensive system is driven by design decisions about its structure, frameworks, technologies, languages, etc. Unlike code-level technical debt, which can be readily detected by static analysers, and can often be refactored with minimal efforts, architectural debt is hard to detect, and its remediation is wide-ranging, daunting, and often avoided. The objective of this study is to develop a better understanding of how software development organisations conceptualize their architectural debt, and how they deal with it, if at all. We used a grounded theory method, eliciting qualitative data from software architects and senior technical staff from a wide range of software development organizations. The result of the study, i.e., the theory emerging from the collected data, constitutes an encompassing conceptual theory of architectural debt, identifying and relating concepts such as symptoms, causes, consequences, and management strategies. By grounding the findings in empirical data, the theory provides researchers and practitioners with evidence of which crucial factors of architectural technical debt are experienced in industrial contexts.
KW - Grounded theory
KW - Software architecture
KW - Technical debt
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85091522045&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85091522045&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-3-030-58923-3_14
DO - 10.1007/978-3-030-58923-3_14
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85091522045
SN - 9783030589226
T3 - Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
SP - 202
EP - 219
BT - Software Architecture
A2 - Jansen, Anton
A2 - Malavolta, Ivano
A2 - Muccini, Henry
A2 - Ozkaya, Ipek
A2 - Zimmermann, Olaf
PB - Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH
Y2 - 14 September 2020 through 18 September 2020
ER -
