Understanding software architecture erosion: A systematic mapping study

Abstract

Architecture erosion (AEr) can adversely affect software development and has received significant attention in the last decade. However, there is an absence of a comprehensive understanding of the state of research about the reasons and consequences of AEr, and the countermeasures to address AEr. This work aims at systematically investigating, identifying, and analyzing the reasons, consequences, and ways of detecting and handling AEr. With 73 studies included, the main results are as follows: (1) AEr manifests not only through architectural violations and structural issues but also causing problems in software quality and during software evolution; (2) non-technical reasons that cause AEr should receive the same attention as technical reasons, and practitioners should raise awareness of the grave consequences of AEr, thereby taking actions to tackle AEr-related issues; (3) a spectrum of approaches, tools, and measures has been proposed and employed to detect and tackle AEr; and (4) three categories of difficulties and five categories of lessons learned on tackling AEr were identified. The results can provide researchers a comprehensive understanding of AEr and help practitioners handle AEr and improve the sustainability of their architecture. More empirical studies are required to investigate the practices of detecting and addressing AEr in industrial settings.

Symptoms of Architecture Erosion in Code Reviews: A Study of Two OpenStack Projects

“…A symptom is a partial sign or indicator of the emergence of architecture erosion. Structural and violation symptoms are the most widely discussed erosion symptom types in the literature [17] (see Section VIII-B). In this work we focus on these two types of symptoms and collectively refer to them as architecture erosion symptoms.…”

“…Identifying erosion symptoms through code review could support detecting architecture erosion early in software systems, that would otherwise not be captured by static analysis of source code. Regarding the scope, we focus on violation and structural symptoms of architecture erosion (see Section II-B), as these two types are the most frequently discussed in the literature according to our recent study [17] (see Section VIII-B).…”

Understanding Software Architecture Erosion: A Systematic Mapping Study

“…By comparing the sample data extraction results from the two authors, we established that they largely overlap. We provided both the pilot data extraction results and the sample data extraction results in the replication package [35]. Finally, all divergences and ambiguities of the results of the extracted data were discussed together for reaching an agreement.…”

“…To facilitate the replicability of our SMS, we provide the replication package of this SMS as an online resource [35]. The replication package includes the detailed information of the 73 selected studies (see Appendix A) and the extracted data based on the 16 data items listed in Table 4.…”

“…Nevertheless, relevant studies might still be omitted for various reasons, such as different terms used to describe the phenomenon of AEr, incompleteness of the selected venues. Additionally, a replication package of this SMS has been made available online [35] to improve its replicability. With these measures, we strove to ensure that this SMS can be repeated by following the procedure in Section 3.…”