The perception of Architectural Smells in industrial practice

TL;DR

This paper explores how software engineers perceive architectural smells in industrial practice, highlighting their impact on maintenance and evolution, and examining current management practices and tools.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights into practitioners' perceptions of architectural smells and their management strategies in real-world industrial settings.

Findings

Practitioners perceive architectural smells as significant maintenance issues.

Architectural smells are often introduced during system evolution.

Current practices and tools vary in effectiveness for managing architectural smells.

Abstract

Architectural Technical Debt (ATD) is considered as the most significant type of TD in industrial practice. In this study, we interview 21 software engineers and architects to investigate a specific type of ATD, namely architectural smells (AS). Our goal is to understand the phenomenon of AS better and support practitioners to better manage it and researchers to offer relevant support. The findings of this study provide insights on how practitioners perceive AS and how they introduce them, the maintenance and evolution issues they experienced and associated to the presence of AS, and what practices and tools they adopt to manage AS.