Improving the quality of architecture design through peer-reviews and recombination

Abstract

Software architecture reviews help improve the quality of architecture design decisions. Traditional reviews are considered expensive and timeconsuming. We assert that organizations can consider leveraging peer-reviews and recombination (i.e., promoting design improvement through sharing design ideas) activities to improve the quality of architectures and getting staff trained. This paper reports a case study aimed at exploring the potential impact of combining peer-review and recombination on the quality of architecture design and design decisions made by novice architects, who usually have limited practical experience of architecture design. The findings show that the use of peer-review and recombination can improve both the quality of architecture design and documented decisions. From the decision-making perspective, this study also identifies the main types of challenges that the participants faced during architectural decision making and reasoning. These findings can be leveraged to focus on the types of training novice architects may need to effectively and efficiently address the types of challenges identified in this study.