Empirical studies to identify best practices for addressing recurring concerns of enterprise architects and solution architects in large-scale agile development

Abstract

Over the past decades, the emergence of agile development methods has transformed the way software is developed. Even though systems are getting more and more complex, companies have to develop and release software faster and at the same time increase the quality. Due to the proven success of agile methods, companies also try to make use of these benefits in large-scale agile software development projects. However, this represents a risk and is often associated with challenges such as managing silos, complex functional dependencies between systems and establishing an agile way of working for multiple teams. Especially enterprise and solution architects face a large number of problems. Regardless of their importance, there is a lack of research on the concerns and best practices involved. Based on a mixed-methods research design we provide an overview of typical concerns and present five best practices of enterprise and solution architects in large-scale agile development.

Objectives

The objective is to identify best practices for recurring concerns of enterprise architects and solution architects in large-scale agile development projects with the help of pattern-based design-research [2,3,4]. 

Research method

In order to achieve the above mentioned objectives, a mixed-methods research design in line with the recommendations of [6] will be applied. It consists of three distinct phases: 

1. Structured Literature Review [7]

2. Case Study [5, 8]

3. Expert Interviews [1].

Literature

[1] Bogner, A., Littig, B., & Menz, W. (2009). Introduction: Expert interviews—An introduction to a new methodological debate. In Interviewing experts (pp. 1-13). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

[2] Buckl S., Matthes F., Schneider A.W., & Schweda C.M. (2013) Pattern-Based Design Research – An Iterative Research Method Balancing Rigor and Relevance.

[3] Uludağ , Ö., Kleehaus , M., Caprano , C., & Matthes , F. (2018). Identifying and Structuring Challenges in Large Scale Agile Development Based on a Structured Literature Review. 2018 IEEE 22nd International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference (EDOC) EDOC), 191 197.

[4] Uludağ, Ö., Harders, N.-M., & Matthes, F. (2019). Documenting Recurring Concerns and Patterns in Large-Scale Agile Development.

[5] Runeson and Höst (2009): Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering;

[6] Tashakkori, A., & Teddlie, C. (Eds.). (2010). Sage handbook of mixed methods in social & behavioral research. sage.

[7] VomBrocke, J., Simons, A., Niehaves, B., Riemer, K., Plattfaut, R., & Cleven, A. (2009, June). Reconstructing the giant: on the importance of rigour in documenting the literature search process. In Ecis (Vol. 9, pp. 2206-2217).

[8] Yin (2008): Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Applied Social Research Methods);