Characterizing real-time reflexion-based architecture recovery: an in-vivo multi-case study

Architecting software systems is an integral part of the software development lifecycle. However, often the implementation of the resultant software ends up diverging from the designed architecture due to factors such as time pressures on the development team during implementation/evolution, or the lack of architectural awareness on the part of (possibly new) programmers. In such circumstances, the quality requirements addressed by the as-designed architecture are likely to be unaddressed by the as-implemented system. This paper reports on in-vivo case studies of the ACTool, a tool which supports real-time Reflexion Modeling for architecture recovery and on-going consistency. It describes our experience conducting architectural recovery sessions on three deployed, commercial software systems in two companies with the tool, as a first step towards ongoing architecture consistency in these systems. Our findings provide the first in-depth characterization of real-time Reflexion-based architectural recovery in practice, highlighting the architectural recovery agendas at play, the modeling approaches employed, the mapping approaches employed and characterizing the inconsistencies encountered. Our findings also discuss the usefulness of the ACTool for these companies.