{"title":"Interplay of Architecture, Business Goals, and Current Technology in the Evolution of Call Center Systems","authors":"John Klein","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.37","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.37","url":null,"abstract":"Architecture, business goals, and current technology (ABCs) continuously interact with each other to define and evolve the structure and function of software systems. This experience report looks at the ABC relationships in the domain of call center (CC) systems. Call centers are IT systems that provide telephone-based customer service. We look at the architecture and quality attributes of CC systems circa 1990. We then examine technology disruptions in the late 1990s which led to new business goals. Finally, we see how the system architecture has evolved to satisfy these new business goals, why this change has reprioritized the quality attributes of the system, and how the architect's skills have had to evolve to address this new type of system.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124826259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Software Architecture in Game Development","authors":"Andrew Brownsword","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.51","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.51","url":null,"abstract":"Summary form only given. Video games have now existed in various forms for over 30 years, and have evolved from humble beginnings into remarkably complex software projects. The ever present emphasis on an immersive audio/visual experience has put game developers in the position of being on the bleeding edge of exploring the performance of modern consumer hardware. This talk will discuss the elements that make up a contemporary video game, the software processes that are involved in development, key challenges, and look at some important design patterns that form the architectural basis.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125049154","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Deepak Dhungana, Thomas Neumayer, P. Grünbacher, Rick Rabiser
{"title":"Supporting the Evolution of Product Line Architectures with Variability Model Fragments","authors":"Deepak Dhungana, Thomas Neumayer, P. Grünbacher, Rick Rabiser","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.23","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.23","url":null,"abstract":"Evolution is a permanent challenge in product line engineering. Reusable assets such as software components or documents evolve continuously due to new customer requirements or technology changes. This leads to modifications or extensions of the product line's variability models describing the reference architecture. Due to the large size of product lines, single stakeholders or teams can only maintain a small part of a system which poses additional challenges for evolution. This paper presents a tool-supported approach for building and maintaining variability models of large-scale product lines. We structure variability models into multiple model fragments of manageable size that can be created and maintained by individual teams. Model fragments can be merged semi- automatically into a variability model. We illustrate the approach with examples from ongoing industry collaboration.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117253013","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Lamantia, Yuanfang Cai, Alan MacCormack, J. Rusnak
{"title":"Analyzing the Evolution of Large-Scale Software Systems Using Design Structure Matrices and Design Rule Theory: Two Exploratory Cases","authors":"M. Lamantia, Yuanfang Cai, Alan MacCormack, J. Rusnak","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.49","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.49","url":null,"abstract":"Designers have long recognized the value of modularity, but important software modularity principles have remained informal. According to Baldwin and Clark's (2000) design rule theory (DRT) , modular architectures add value to system designs by creating options to improve the system by substituting or experimenting on individual modules. In this paper, we examine the design evolution of two software product platforms through the modeling lens of DRT and design structure matrices (DSMs). We show that DSM models and DRT precisely explain how real- world modularization activities in one case allowed for different rates of evolution in different software modules and in another case conferred distinct strategic advantages on a firm by permitting substitution of an at-risk software module without substantial change to the rest of the system. Our results provide positive evidence that DSM and DRT can inform important aspects of large-scale software structure and evolution, having the potential to guide software architecture design activities.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124513675","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Tsung-Yen Chen, P. Tsai, T. Chou, C. Shih, T. Kuo, J. W. Liu, A. Thamizhmani
{"title":"Component Model and Architecture of Smart Devices for Elderly","authors":"Tsung-Yen Chen, P. Tsai, T. Chou, C. Shih, T. Kuo, J. W. Liu, A. Thamizhmani","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.11","url":null,"abstract":"This paper describes a component model and component-based architecture of smart devices and systems that are designed to enhance life quality and well being of elderly individuals. In addition to providing the traditional view of hardware, firmware and software components, the model also provides developers with an operational view. The view enables the developer to specify device-user interactions as executable workflows and allows the device operations and user actions to be experimented with and their correctness ascertained throughout the design and development process. The paper also presents a simulation environment for this purpose.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124000142","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding Architectural Assets","authors":"P. Eeles","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.39","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.39","url":null,"abstract":"\"The life of a software architect is a long and rapid succession of suboptimal design decisions taken partly in the dark. \" [1] The purpose of this paper is to shed some light on the darkness, by discussing a key characteristic of successful software architectures - the use of reusable assets. Reusable assets provide a valuable vehicle for capitalizing on the work of other successful architects, from fine-grained programming idioms to large- grained off-the-shelf packaged solutions. However, consideration of reusable assets can itself be a minefield. There are many different types of asset to consider, and it is not always clear what is meant by each of them, and the value they provide. What is the difference between an architectural style and a reference architecture? How does a mechanism differ from a framework? The purpose of this paper is to discuss the different types of reusable asset available to the architect, their characteristics, and their usage.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127389767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ready! Set! Go! An Action Research Agenda for Software Architecture Research","authors":"H. Christensen, K. M. Hansen, Kari R. Schougaard","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.36","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.36","url":null,"abstract":"Software architecture practice is highly complex. Software architects interact with business as well as technical aspects of systems, often embedded in large and changing organizations. We first make an argument that an appropriate research agenda for understanding, describing, and changing architectural practice in this context is based on an action research agenda in which researchers use ethnographic techniques to understand practice and engages directly with and in practice when proposing and designing new practices. Secondly, we present an overview of an ongoing project which applies action research techniques to understand and potentially change architectural practice in four Danish software companies.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125447705","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of Dependency Links in Ensuring Architectural View Consistency","authors":"Alek Radjenovic, R. Paige","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.30","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.30","url":null,"abstract":"Modern systems modelling languages frequently support the use of multiple views in order to provide flexible, extensible, and rich mechanisms for capturing system characteristics. Architectural description languages (ADLs) often provide many useful capabilities but fail to provide support for ensuring view consistency simply because they present a single view of the system. An ADL used for building dependable systems must provide multiple views. For these kinds of systems, ensuring view consistency is critical so as to provide guarantees about the system as a whole. In this paper, we outline an architectural modelling language, AIM, which supports multiple views, but we focus on its first-class support for dependency links, which are used to ensure view consistency. We illustrate the principles on examples from a real engine control system.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"157 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114239266","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Guiding Architectural Decisions with the Influencing Factors Method","authors":"P. Stoll, Anders Wall, C. Norström","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.22","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.22","url":null,"abstract":"The influencing factors (IF) method guides the architect through stakeholders' concerns to architectural decisions in line with current business goals. The result is a set of requirements on software quality attributes and business goals and highlighted trade-offs among software quality attributes and among business goals. The IF method is suitable for sustainable software systems since it allows new concerns, resulting from changes in business goals, stakeholder concerns, technical environment and organization, to be added to existing concerns.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128004572","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Towards Software Architecture Physiology: Identifying Vital Components","authors":"Ilham Alloui, S. Cîmpan, H. Verjus","doi":"10.1109/WICSA.2008.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/WICSA.2008.33","url":null,"abstract":"Several architecture analysis methods are proposed in the literature for evaluating both the structure and the behavior of architectures. A parallel between humans and software systems leads to some interesting consideration on kinds of analysis that can be performed on a system architecture, such as the identification of vital element. Such identification improves the system architecture understanding and allows us to estimate to what extent, a change on some components could impact the rest of the architecture.","PeriodicalId":352075,"journal":{"name":"Seventh Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2008)","volume":"87 25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2008-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126303229","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}