The perception of Architectural Smells in industrial practice
This research addresses the problem of managing architectural technical debt for software engineers and architects in industry, but it is incremental as it focuses on perception rather than novel solutions.
The study investigated architectural smells (AS) as a specific type of Architectural Technical Debt by interviewing 21 software engineers and architects in industrial practice, finding insights into how practitioners perceive, introduce, and manage AS along with associated maintenance issues.
Architectural Technical Debt (ATD) is considered as the most significant type of TD in industrial practice. In this study, we interview 21 software engineers and architects to investigate a specific type of ATD, namely architectural smells (AS). Our goal is to understand the phenomenon of AS better and support practitioners to better manage it and researchers to offer relevant support. The findings of this study provide insights on how practitioners perceive AS and how they introduce them, the maintenance and evolution issues they experienced and associated to the presence of AS, and what practices and tools they adopt to manage AS.