Self-Contained Cross-Cutting Pipeline Software Architecture
This addresses software development inefficiencies for teams using agile and continuous deployment, though it appears incremental as it builds on existing architectural concepts.
The paper tackled the problem of dependencies in layered software architecture that slow down releases, by proposing a self-contained, cross-cutting pipeline architecture (SCPA) that reduced release time by 42.99%, increased delivered code by 22.58%, and decreased defects by 85.54%.
Layered software architecture contains several intra-layer and inter-layer dependencies. Each layer depends on shared components making it difficult to release a code change, bug fix or feature without exhaustive testing and having to build the entire software code base. This paper proposed self-contained, cross-cutting pipeline architecture (SCPA) that is independent of existing layers. We chose 2 open source projects and 3 internal intern projects that used n-tier architecture and applied the SCPA to release subsequent feature additions and any bug fixes. The SCPA decreased the release time by 42.99%. The lines of delivered code (LOC), increased by 22.58%. The number of defects found in existing functionality decreased by 85.54%. The SCPA also provided ability to roll back or switch off the new feature quickly. SCPA proved a suitable architecture for agile software development and continuous deployment.