Patricia Lago

John Grundy

Paris Avgeriou

Ivan Mistrík

Jon G. Hall

Why have a book about the relation between requirements and software architecture? Understanding the relation between requirements and architecture is important because the requirements, be they explicit or implicit, represent the function, whereas the architecture determines the form. While changes to a set of requirements may impact on the realization of the architecture, choices made for an architectural solution may impact on requirements, e.g., in terms of revising functional or non-functional requirements that cannot actually be met. Although research in both requirements engineering and software architecture is quite active, it is in their combination that understanding is most needed and actively sought. Presenting the current state of the art is the purpose of this book. The editors have divided the contributions into four parts: Part 1 “Theoretical Underpinnings and Reviews” addresses the issue of requirements change management in architectural design through traceability and reasoning. Part 2 “Tools and Techniques” presents approaches, tools, and techniques for bridging the gap between software requirements and architecture. Part 3 “Industrial Case Studies” then reports industrial experiences, while part 4 on “Emerging Issues” details advanced topics such as synthesizing architecture from requirements or the role of middleware in architecting for non-functional requirements. The final chapter is a conclusions chapter identifying key contributions and outstanding areas for future research and improvement of practice. The book is targeted at academic and industrial researchers in requirements engineering or software architecture. Graduate students specializing in these areas as well as advanced professionals in software development will also benefit from the results and experiences presented in this volume.

Relating Software Requirements and Architectures

André van der Hoek

Jim Whitehead

Collaboration among individuals – from users to developers – is central to modern software engineering. It takes many forms: joint activity to solve common problems, negotiation to resolve conflicts, creation of shared definitions, and both social and technical perspectives impacting all software development activity. The difficulties of collaboration are also well documented. The grand challenge is not only to ensure that developers in a team deliver effectively as individuals, but that the whole team delivers more than just the sum of its parts. The editors of this book have assembled an impressive selection of authors, who have contributed to an authoritative body of work tackling a wide range of issues in the field of collaborative software engineering. The resulting volume is divided into four parts, preceded by a general editorial chapter providing a more detailed review of the domain of collaborative software engineering. Part 1 is on "Characterizing Collaborative Software Engineering", Part 2 examines various "Tools and Techniques", Part 3 addresses organizational issues, and finally Part 4 contains four examples of "Emerging Issues in Collaborative Software Engineering". As a result, this book delivers a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview and empirical results for researchers in academia and industry in areas like software process management, empirical software engineering, and global software development. Practitioners working in this area will also appreciate the detailed descriptions and reports which can often be used as guidelines to improve their daily work.

Ivan Mistrík

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