Agile Software Architecture by Muhammad Ali Babar & Alan W. Brown & Ivan Mistrik

Author:Muhammad Ali Babar & Alan W. Brown & Ivan Mistrik
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780124078857
Publisher: Elsevier Inc.
Published: 2013-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

7.9 Conclusion

Architecture analysis is a broad topic, which is addressed by a large number of different analysis methods and techniques. Available analysis approaches differ considerably in various aspects, including process, stakeholders, and in the supported analysis goals. Many of the existing approaches for architecture analysis are currently not well suited for being applied continuously in an agile setting. This is mainly because they have been developed for rather plan-driven processes, with dedicated points of analysis in the process and external analysis processes. Approaches for quality control in agile processes show that integration, low resource demand, and/or automation are main requirements for CSAA. If we look at existing approaches for architecture analysis, we see that very few provide sufficient support for these requirements throughout all analysis activities, including preparation, analysis, and resolution.

Our own experiences with an approach for CSAA showed that automated CSAA works well in structural and conformance analyses. Automation-based approaches for other kinds of analysis, specifically for architecture evaluation, remain a challenge because of the effort involved in creating and maintaining the required formally defined models. Also, architecture evaluation includes not only checking whether an architecture design addresses the requirements correctly, but also comparing different alternatives and selecting the most suitable one by weighing the benefits and drawbacks of different solutions. This means that large parts of architecture evaluation are based on experience and cannot be automated. Lightweight architecture reviews might be a possible approach, but we still lack experiences with lightweight reviews in agile processes.

We conclude that continuous architecture evaluation in agile processes remains an open research question. Continuous analysis of semantic analysis goals based on experience can be performed using lightweight architecture reviews, which reduce resource demand by analyzing only selected parts of an architecture and do not require explicit architecture documentation. Further, structural analysis as provided by the approach presented in this chapter can be used for automating single activities of the analysis process like the creation and maintenance of architecture documentation. Providing an architecture description that is always up to date and support for lightweight capturing of architectural documentation (e.g., through architectural knowledge) might help to make architectural evaluation more explicit and manageable in such processes. To answer these questions, we need studies of the state of practice of architecture evaluation in agile processes, new approaches for automating specific tasks of architecture evaluation with reasonable effort, and suggestions for improving manual reviews in environments with constraints on time and other resources.

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