Software Architecture Reconstruction: Practice Needs and Current Approaches

Software architectures serve as the blueprints for systems, and they are central to the development of software product lines and the design of component-based systems. In existing systems, the architecture often must be reconstructed to reflect the as-built system accurately. This report presents the concept of practice scenarios for architecture reconstruction, which outline common problem/solution pairs that can be used in the strategic application of architecture reconstruction at Department of Defense (DoD) and commercial organizations. Based on an investigation of already developed and presented reconstruction approaches, the report describes deficiencies that have been uncovered in several practice scenarios and proposes improvements.