Software Architecture Evaluation in Practice: Retrospective on More Than 50 Architecture Evaluations in Industry

Abstract

Architecture evaluation has become a mature sub-discipline in architecting with high-quality practical and scientific literature available. However, publications on industrial applications and concrete experiences are rare. We want to fill this gap and share our experiences - having performed more than 50 architecture evaluations for industrial customers in the last decade. We compiled facts and consolidated our findings about architecture evaluations in industry. In this paper, we provide a critical retrospective on more than 50 projects and share our lessons learned. This industrial and practical perspective allows practitioners to benefit from our experience in their daily architecture work and scientific community to focus their research work on the generalizability of our findings.