Context:

During software development, some architectural design decisions incur technical debt, either deliberately or inadvertently. These have serious impact on the quality of a software system, and can cost significant time and effort to be changed. While current research efforts have explored general concepts of architectural design decisions and technical debt separately, debt-incurring architectural design decisions have not been specifically explored in practice.

Objective:

In this case study, we explore debt-incurring architectural design decisions (DADDs) in practice. Specifically, we explore the main types of DADDs, why and how they are incurred in a software system, and how practitioners deal with these types of design decisions.

Method:

We performed interviews and a focus group with practitioners working in embedded and enterprise software companies, discussing their concrete experience with such architectural design decisions.

Results:

We provide the following contributions: 1) A categorization for the types of DADDs, which extend a current ontology on architectural design decisions. 2) A process on how deliberate DADDs are made in practice. 3) A conceptual model which shows the relationships between the causes and triggers of inadvertent DADDs. 4) The main factors that influence the way of dealing with DADDs.

Conclusion:

The results can support the development of new approaches and tools for Architecture Technical Debt management from the perspective of Design Decisions. Moreover, they support future research to capture architecture knowledge related to DADDs.

中文翻译：

---

导致技术债务的架构设计决策——一个工业案例研究

语境：

在软件开发过程中，一些架构设计决策会有意或无意地产生技术债务。这些对软件系统的质量有严重影响，并且需要花费大量的时间和精力来进行更改。虽然当前的研究工作已经分别探讨了架构设计决策和技术债务的一般概念，但在实践中还没有专门探讨导致债务的架构设计决策。

客观的：

在本案例研究中，我们在实践中探索了产生债务的架构设计决策 (DADD)。具体来说，我们探讨了 DADD 的主要类型、它们在软件系统中产生的原因和方式，以及从业者如何处理这些类型的设计决策。

方法：

我们与在嵌入式和企业软件公司工作的从业者进行了访谈和焦点小组讨论，讨论他们在此类架构设计决策方面的具体经验。

结果：

我们提供了以下贡献：1) DADD 类型的分类，它扩展了当前关于架构设计决策的本体。2) 关于如何在实践中进行深思熟虑的 DADD 的过程。3) 一个概念模型，它显示了无意 DADD 的原因和触发因素之间的关系。4）影响DADD处理方式的主要因素。

结论：

结果可以支持从设计决策的角度开发用于架构技术债务管理的新方法和工具。此外，它们支持未来的研究以获取与 DADD 相关的架构知识。