University of Groningen
Architectural assumptions and their management in software development
Yang, Chen
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Publication date:
2018
Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database
Citation for published version (APA):
Yang, C. (2018). Architectural assumptions and their management in software development.
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
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Propositions
belonging to the thesis
Architectural Assumptions and their Management
in Software Development
by
Chen Yang
1. Assumptions are not new in Software Engineering; software professionals make assumptions every day.
2. Assumptions in Software Engineering are subjective. This is the major reason that stakeholders may understand differently what constitutes an assumption; they also have difficulties drawing a line between assumptions and other types of software artifacts.
3. Uncertainty and assumption are two different but related concepts in Software Engineering: one way to deal with uncertainties is to make implicit or explicit assumptions, but not all uncertainties lead to assumptions.
4. Architectural assumptions need to be systematically managed in Software Engineering projects; otherwise, not-well managed architectural assumptions can lead to many problems.
5. In most cases, architectural assumptions are not well managed; sometimes stakeholders are not even aware of the assumptions they make.
6. Making, Describing, Evaluating, and Maintaining architectural assumptions are the core activities in architectural assumption management.
7. Although architectural assumptions are important in software development, their management can be rather resource-intensive.
8. Agility is one way to address the resource-intensiveness of architectural assumption management, while automation could be another way.
9. We should always listen to the opinions of others regarding research. However, instead of waiting for others to tell us what to do in research, it is critical to lead the research by ourselves.
10. I used to believe that speed is over quality when I was a practitioner, as we can come up with something first and improve the quality iteratively. However, in academia, quality is always over speed.
