Software Architecture as a Set of Architectural Design Decisions

Knowledge management plays an important role in the software architecting process. Recently, this role has become more apparent by a paradigm shift that views a software architecture as the set of architectural design decisions it embodies. This shift has sparked the discussion in both research and practice on how to best facilitate sharing of so-called architectural knowledge, and how tools can best be employed. In order to design successful tool support for architectural knowledge sharing it is important to take into account what software architecting really entails. In this paper, we define the main characteristics of architecting, based on observations in a large software development organization, and state-of-the-art literature in software architecture. Based on the defined characteristics, we determine how best practices known from knowledge management could be used to improve architectural knowledge sharing. This results in the definition of a set of desired properties of architectural knowledge sharing tools. Finally, we highlight the design and implementation of EAGLE, an architectural knowledge sharing portal that implements those properties.

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Attributes for Characterizing the Evolution of Architectural Design Decisions

Third International IEEE Workshop on Software Evolvability 2007 ◽

10.1109/se.2007.17 ◽

2007 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Rafael Capilla ◽

Francisco Nava ◽

Antony Tang

Keyword(s):

Architectural Design ◽

Design Decisions

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Design decisions and design rationale in software architecture

Journal of Systems and Software ◽

10.1016/j.jss.2009.05.053 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 82 (8) ◽

pp. 1195-1197 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Muhammad Ali Babar ◽

Patricia Lago

Keyword(s):

Software Architecture ◽

Design Rationale ◽

Design Decisions

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Activity shapes: towards a spatiotemporal analysis in architecture

Revista de arquitectura ◽

10.5354/0719-5427.2012.32550 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 18 (26) ◽

pp. 11

Author(s):

Paula Gómez ◽

Ellen Yi-Luen Do ◽

Mario Romero

Keyword(s):

Human Activity ◽

Architectural Design ◽

Activity Patterns ◽

Spatiotemporal Analysis ◽

Spatial Analyses ◽

Design Decisions ◽

Detailed Understanding ◽

Design Processes ◽

Spatial Configurations ◽

Future Evaluation

Computational spatial analyses play an important role in architectural design processes, providing feedback about spatial configurations that may inform design decisions. Current spatial analyses convey geometrical aspects of space, but aspects such as space use are not encompassed within the analyses, although they are fundamental for architectural programming. Through this study, we initiate the discussion of including human activity as an input that will change the focus of current computational spatial analyses toward a detailed understanding of activity patterns in space and time. We envision that the emergent insights will serve as guidelines for future evaluation of design intents motivated by spatial occupancy, since we –designers– mentally constructing a model of the situation and activities on it (Eastman, 2001).

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