Continuous Alignment Between Software Architecture Design and Development in CI/CD Pipelines

Oftentimes, architectural information is not well-maintained, while software is developed and thus is out of sync with the product. Development of architectural models and documentation is therefore frequently done (i) before development starts and quickly becomes outdated, or (ii) as an afterthought or step taken when, e.g., significant refactoring becomes necessary, or (iii) a combination of the two. In order to resolve this dilemma and maintain better clarity and reasoning on the system, we propose to ensure continuous alignment between software architecture design and the development process itself, by suitable extension and use of CI/CD pipelines. Specifically, methods from architecture recovery should serve as a good basis for achieving such continuous alignment, e.g., when focused or projected on specific critical user journeys. The alignment will also allow the detection of architectural decay and deviation from targeted non-functional properties. In this chapter, we outline the vision and open research topics toward continuous alignment.