Documentação de arquitetura de software em contextos ágeis de desenvolvimento

Abstract

Today’s software development environment is highly competitive and imposes on companies the growing need to deliver value quickly and spend fewer resources. In this case, these companies allocate resources to accelerated development to the detriment of planning activities and software architecture documentation. As a result, they do not accurately plan or document relevant information about the system such as user interactions, infrastructure, and development platform, leading to greater complexity in systems development and maintenance. In this context, our research question is which system architecture documentation approaches are suitable in agile software development contexts and how to use them? We executed a literature review and a feature analysis to evaluate the 4+1, S4V, ADD, BAPO/CAFCR, C3A, and C4 approaches. The analysis indicated that the 4+1 and C4 approaches had potential for application in the context studied, and we carried out three more experimental studies to validate it. There is no significant difference in the correctness of the documentation when using the two approaches. However, some views, such as context (C4) and physical (4+1), for example, are more important and easier to use in the early stages of development, and others, such as component (C4) and logical (4+1), will only be useful in the future. Finally, we also found that, in order not to impact the development process, one solution is to define a person from the team to document the system’s architecture, as long as they have extensive knowledge of the product and, if they do not, allow other team members to contribute.