Refactoring Decision Support for Developers and Architects Based on Architectural Impact

Refactorings are key activities for achieving sustainable software systems. However, refactorings demand high effort and features are often deemed more important. The time pressure to deliver is always high and to select important refactorings, one has to consider manifold criteria. Current approaches only relate to code smells and design flaws, and do not take architectural impact into consideration. The project aims at developing a decision framework integrating architecture smell detection, selection of appropriate refactorings and impact analysis to prioritize refactorings and support not only developers but also software architects. It shall be evaluated using control groups by measuring and comparing the required time and the resulting software quality.