Software Systems In-House Integration : Observations and Guidelines Concerning Architecture and Process

Software evolution is a crucial activity for software organizations. A specifc type of software evolution is the integration of previously isolated systems. The need for integration is often a consequence of different organizational changes, including merging of previously separate organizations. One goal of software integration is to increase the value to users of several systems by combining their functionality, another is to reduce functionality overlap. If the systems are completely owned and controlled in-house, there is an additional advantage in rationalizing the use of internal resources by decreasing the amount of software with essentially the same purpose. Despite in-house integration being common, this topic has received little attention from researchers. This thesis contributes to an increasing understanding of the problems associated with in-house integration and provides guidelines to the more efficient utilization of the existing systems and the personnel. In the thesis, we combine two perspectives: software architecture and processes. The perspective of software architecture is used to show how compatibility analysis and development of integration alternatives can be performed rapidly at a high level of abstraction. The software process perspective has led to the identification of important characteristics and practices of the integration process. The guidelines provided in the thesis will help those performing future in-house integration to make well-founded decisions timely and efficiently. The contributions are based on several integration projects in industry, which have been studied systematically in order to collect, evaluate and generalize their experiences