Knowledge Base Repository
In addition to research papers, the Design Society is developing several valuable resources for those interested in the study of design. These include a repository of PhD theses, a library of case studies and transcripts of design activities, and an archive of our newsletters. Please note that these resources are accessible exclusively to Design Society members.
Visualizing and Measuring Software Portfolio Architecture: A Flexibility Analysis
Lagerstr
Type:
Year:
2014
Editor:
Marle, F.; Jankovic, M.; Maurer, M.; Schmidt, D. M.; Lindemann, U.
Author:
Series:
DSM
Section:
System Architecture and Product Modularity
Page(s):
65-74
Abstract:
In this paper, we test a Design Structure Matrix (DSM) based method for visualizing and measuring software portfolio architectures, and use our measures to predict the costs of architectural change. Our data is drawn from a biopharmaceutical company, comprising 407 architectural components with 1,157 dependencies between them. We show that the architecture of this system can be classified as a “core-periphery” system, meaning it contains a single large dominant cluster of interconnected components (the “Core”) representing 32% of the system. We find that the classification of software applications within this architecture, as being either Core or Peripheral, is a significant predictor of the costs of architectural change. In regression tests, we show that this measure has greater predictive power than prior measures of coupling used in the literature.
Keywords:
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