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A Rationale-based Model for Architecture Design Reasoning

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5.3. Survey findings<br />

• overall system design (86.4%)<br />

• requirements or tender analysis (81.5%)<br />

• non-functional requirements design (64.2%)<br />

• software design and specification (58%)<br />

• project management tasks (50.6%)<br />

• IT planning and proposal preparation (49.4%)<br />

• data modelling (44.4%)<br />

• implementation design (42%)<br />

• program design and specification (35.8%)<br />

• test planning and design (29.6%)<br />

• training (19.8%)<br />

Our typical respondent’s main ef<strong>for</strong>ts are spent in the early project phases including<br />

requirements and tender analysis, overall design, high level design, non-functional design<br />

and software design. Most of them also have management responsibilities such as project<br />

management and IT planning. To a lesser extent, they per<strong>for</strong>m detailed design and implementation<br />

activities.<br />

We asked our respondents if their projects or organisations recognise software architect<br />

roles. 43.2% of respondents said software architects are <strong>for</strong>mally recognized across all<br />

projects in the organization, while 48.1% said only some projects in the organization<br />

recognized the use of architects. This may be due to the organization structure or the<br />

nature of the projects. It has been found that software architects would be involved in<br />

projects under the following circumstances: new projects (23.5%); mission critical projects<br />

(25.8%); high risk projects (27.2%); high cost projects (18.5%).<br />

5.3.3 <strong>Design</strong>er’s perception of the importance of design rationale<br />

As there is little empirical evidence on how important design rationale are considered<br />

by designers, we posed a number of questions to this end. Respondents were asked to<br />

indicate how often they reason about their design choices and whether they think that<br />

design rationale are important to justify their design choices.<br />

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