Enriching software architecture documentation

  • Authors:

  • Anton Jansen;Paris Avgeriou;Jan Salvador van der Ven

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700AV Groningen, The Netherlands;Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700AV Groningen, The Netherlands;Department of Mathematics and Computing Science, University of Groningen, P.O. Box 800, 9700AV Groningen, The Netherlands

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Systems and Software
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

The effective documentation of Architectural Knowledge (AK) is one of the key factors in leveraging the paradigm shift toward sharing and reusing AK. However, current documentation approaches have severe shortcomings in capturing the knowledge of large and complex systems and subsequently facilitating its usage. In this paper, we propose to tackle this problem through the enrichment of traditional architectural documentation with formal AK. We have developed an approach consisting of a method and an accompanying tool suite to support this enrichment. We evaluate our approach through a quasi-controlled experiment with the architecture of a real, large, and complex system. We provide empirical evidence that our approach helps to partially solve the problem and indicate further directions in managing documented AK.