An Empirical Study on Collaborative Architecture Decision Making in Software Teams
It addresses the challenge of architecture decision-making for software teams, but is incremental as it provides empirical insights into existing collaborative practices.
This study explored architecture decision-making practices in software teams through interviews with 15 architects at a large European company, finding that most teams make decisions collaboratively, with a preference for consultative styles to balance efficiency and team input.
Architecture decision making is considered one of the most challenging cognitive tasks in software development. The objective of this study is to explore the state of the practice of architecture decision making in software teams, including the role of the architect and the associated challenges. An exploratory case study was conducted in a large software company in Europe and fifteen software architects were interviewed as the primary method of data collection. The results reveal that the majority of software teams make architecture decisions collaboratively. Especially, the consultative decision- making style is preferred as it helps to make decisions efficiently while taking the opinions of the team members into consideration. It is observed that most of the software architects maintain a close relationship with the software teams. Several organisational, process and human related challenges and their impact on architecture decision-making are also identified.