The influence of organisational factors on the success and quality of a product-line architecture

The quality of a product-line architecture is strongly affected by its maintenance process, business environment, organisational culture and management practices. The organisational factors which affect the architecture are hardest to detect since their influence on the code and other development artefacts are typically not documented. We have conducted two case studies at Australian organisations to study the influence of organisational factors on the success and quality of a product-line architecture. In our work, we have found organisational factors which affect the quality of the code and architecture. However, although the success of the architecture depends on a certain level of quality, the success of the architecture is rarely measured by its quality. Architectural success is often measured by product sales, which only have a tenuous relationship with the architectural quality. Thus, an organisation may have a successful product-line which is costly to maintain. The results from our case study research are presented in this paper