Improving Architectural Practices to Mitigate Architectural Debt in Evolving Systems: An Action Research Study
Authors
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2024
Submitted on
2024-05-30
Pages
32
Abstract
Architectural Debt (AD) is the largest contributor to Technical Debt (TD), a prevalent issue in most IT organizations. AD involves short-sighted decisions, often due to time constraints, that reduce efficiency and increase maintenance costs over time. If unresolved, these decisions accumulate until development grinds to a halt. This Action Research (AR) study examines the effectiveness of the Smell of the Week practice in managing AD in a practical context. Smell of the Week involves selecting a subset of architectural smells to identify and discuss during meetings. Our findings reveal that this practice is useful for initiating discussions about architectural smells and formulating management strategies. Additionally, we introduce a new categorization of architectural smells as Sneaky and Fix-it-Once to further the understanding of their management. Furthermore, we emphasize that evolving architectures require aligned and competent developers capable of distributed decisionmaking.
Keywords
Technical ; Architectural ; Architecture ; Debt ; Smell ; Action ; Research ; Software ; Practice
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