A Study of Architectural Information Foraging in Software Architecture Documents

dc.contributor.authorSu, Moon
dc.contributor.authorTempero, Ewan
dc.contributor.authorHosking, John
dc.contributor.authorGrundy, John
dc.coverage.spatialHelsinki Sweden
dc.date.accessioned2015-12-07T22:19:48Z
dc.date.createdAugust 20-24 2012
dc.date.issued2012
dc.date.updated2016-02-24T11:34:16Z
dc.description.abstractWhen using Software Architecture documents (ADs), users typically "forage" for information. However, it is little understood how they do this foraging or how to structure architecture documentation to assist them. We conducted a survey of two different groups of foragers, industry practitioner and academic AD users, to investigate issues - types of forages, foraging sequences and styles - related to task-based architectural information foraging in software architecture documents. Our results show that there were different pre-conceived ideas of what to forage for prior to the search, but during foraging there was commonly foraged information. The different groups of foragers place different emphasis on information related to quality requirements, purpose of the system, use cases, physical view and process view. Foraging sequences starting with certain information were suggested to better support understanding of the described SA. These sequences typically followed the written order of the information as dictated by the AD producers. This reinforces the critical responsibility of AD producers to structure the architectural information for understanding. Diagrams, views and design decisions were most frequently cited as supporting understanding of the SA. The main hindrance was too much text and a lack of diagrams.
dc.identifier.isbn9780769548272
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/19519
dc.publisherIEEE Computer Society
dc.relation.ispartofseriesWorking IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture (WICSA 2012)
dc.source2012 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference onSoftware Architecture (WICSA) and European Conference on Software Architecture (ECSA)
dc.subjectKeywords: Design decisions; foraging; Information foraging; Process view; Quality requirements; Task-based; understanding; Natural resources exploration; Software architecture exploration; foraging; software architecture document; understanding
dc.titleA Study of Architectural Information Foraging in Software Architecture Documents
dc.typeConference paper
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage150
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage141
local.contributor.affiliationSu, Moon, University of Auckland
local.contributor.affiliationTempero, Ewan, University of Auckland
local.contributor.affiliationHosking, John, College of Engineering and Computer Science, ANU
local.contributor.affiliationGrundy, John, Swinburne University of Technology
local.contributor.authoremailu5099712@anu.edu.au
local.contributor.authoruidHosking, John, u5099712
local.description.notesImported from ARIES
local.description.refereedYes
local.identifier.absfor080309 - Software Engineering
local.identifier.absseo890201 - Application Software Packages (excl. Computer Games)
local.identifier.ariespublicationu5099712xPUB8
local.identifier.doi10.1109/WICSA-ECSA.212.22
local.identifier.scopusID2-s2.0-84870721982
local.identifier.uidSubmittedByu5099712
local.type.statusPublished Version

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