Visualizing and Measuring Software Portfolio Architecture : A Flexibility Analysis

• 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.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Elektroteknik och elektronik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Design structure matrices

Flexibility

Software application portfolio

Software architecture

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)