Context Large project overruns and overtime work have been reported in the software
industry, resulting in additional expense for companies and personal issues for developers …

The importance of architectural knowledge (AK) management for software development has
been highlighted over the past ten years, where a significant amount of research has been …

Whenever developers choose among alternative technical approaches, they make a design
decision. Collectively, design decisions shape how software implements its requirements …

Architectural knowledge consists of architecture design as well as the design decisions,
assumptions, context, and other factors that together determine why a particular solution is …

Large systems often have a long life-span and comprise many intricately related elements.
The verification and maintenance of these systems require a good understanding of their …

Dealing with non-functional requirements (NFRs) has posed a challenge onto software
engineers for many years. Over the years, many methods and techniques have been …

Software architects consider capturing and sharing architectural decisions increasingly
important; many tacit dependencies exist in this architectural knowledge. Architectural …

The need to explicitly document design decisions has been emphasized both in research
and in industry. To address design concerns, software architects and developers implicitly …

The most distinctive thing about humans is not the thumb, of course. It is design. Unlike any
other animal, we incessantly and dramatically reshape both ourselves and our environment …

This paper describes a tool for managing architectural knowledge and rationale. The tool
has been developed to support a framework for capturing and using architectural knowledge …