An empirical investigation of architectural prototyping

Architectural prototyping is the process of using executable code to investigate stakeholders’ software
architecture concerns with respect to a system under development. Previous work has established this
as a useful and cost-effective way of exploration and learning of the design space of a system and in
addressing issues regarding quality attributes, architectural risks, and the problem of knowledge transfer
and conformance. However, the actual industrial use of architectural prototyping has not been thoroughly
researched so far. In this article, we report from three studies of architectural prototyping in practice.
First, we report findings from an ethnographic study of practicing software architects. Secondly, we
report from a focus group on architectural prototyping involving architects from four companies. And,
thirdly, we report from a survey study of 20 practicing software architects and software developers.
Our findings indicate that architectural prototyping plays an important and frequent role in resolving
problems experimentally, but less so in exploring alternative solutions. Furthermore, architectural prototypes
include end-user or business related functionality rather than purely architectural functionality.
Based on these observations we provide recommendations for effective industrial architectural
prototyping.