Architecture Degradation at Scale: Challenges and Insights from Practice
2026 (English)In: Product-Focused Software Process Improvement: 26th International Conference, PROFES 2025, Salerno, Italy, December 1–3, 2025, Proceedings / [ed] Scanniello G., Romano S., Francese R., Lenarduzzi V., Vegas S., Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 2026, p. 451-460Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Large-scale software systems often experience architectural degradation, affecting maintainability, scalability, and quality. To investigate this, we conducted focus groups with senior practitioners across three large organizations. Our analysis revealed four core challenge areas: managing dependencies, ownership and organizational barriers, balancing agility with stability and cost, as well as documentation drift. These findings offer practical insights for mitigating architectural degradation in complex environments.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Springer Science+Business Media B.V., 2026. p. 451-460
Series
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, ISSN 0302-9743 ; 16361
Keywords [en]
Architecture Degradation, Architecture Erosion, Challenges, Insights, Technical Debt, Degradation, Software engineering, Challenge, Focus groups, Four-core, Insight, Large organizations, Large-scale software systems, Organizational barriers, Technical debts, Architecture
National Category
Software Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:bth-28988DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-12089-2_30Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105023325552ISBN: 9783032120885 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:bth-28988DiVA, id: diva2:2021050
Conference
26th International Conference on Product-Focused Software Process Improvement, PROFES 2025, Salerno, Dec 1-3, 2025
Part of project
SERT- Software Engineering ReThought, Knowledge Foundation
Funder
Knowledge Foundation, 201800102025-12-122025-12-122025-12-12Bibliographically approved