Towards a framework for managing architectural design decisions

Software architecture is considered as a set of architectural design decisions. The recent trends, both in research and industry, call for improved tool support for software architects and developers to manage architectural design decisions and its associated concepts. As part of our ongoing work, we propose a framework for managing architectural design decisions in large software-intensive projects. Each component within this framework addresses specific use cases including (a) extraction and classification of design decisions from issue management systems, (b) annotation of architectural elements, (c) recommendation of alternative decision options, (d) reasoning about decisions’ rationale, and (e) recommendation of experts for addressing design decisions. These components are planned to be iteratively realized and evaluated using the design science research approach. We believe that the realization of such a framework will allow an architectural knowledge management systems to integrate with the design, development, and maintenance phases to support stakeholders not only to document design decisions but also to learn from decisions made in the past projects.