Conducting empirical studies on reference architectures in IT consulting firms

Tight time-to-market needs pushes IT consulting firms (ITCFs) to continuously look for techniques to improve their IT services in general, and the design of software architectures in particular. The use of reference architectures allows ITCFs reusing architectural knowledge and components in a syste...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Martínez Fernández, Silverio Juan|||0000-0001-9928-133X, Ameller, David|||0000-0002-3725-566X, Ayala Martínez, Claudia Patricia|||0000-0002-6262-3698, Franch Gutiérrez, Javier|||0000-0001-9733-8830, Terradellas Fernandez, Xavier
Tipo de recurso: informe técnico
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/17065
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/17065
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Software architecture
Empirical software engineering
Programari -- Arquitectura
Software -- Desenvolupament
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Enginyeria del software
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Sistemes d'informació
Descripción
Sumario:Tight time-to-market needs pushes IT consulting firms (ITCFs) to continuously look for techniques to improve their IT services in general, and the design of software architectures in particular. The use of reference architectures allows ITCFs reusing architectural knowledge and components in a systematic way. In return, ITCFs face the need to assess these reference architectures in order to ensure their quality, return on investment and incremental improvement. Little support exists to help ITCFs to face this challenge. In this work-in-progress paper we present an empirical framework aimed to assess ITCFs’ reference architectures and their use in IT projects by harvesting relevant evidence from the wide spectrum of involved stakeholders. We are currently applying this framework in an ITCF and we report the issues found so far.