Do Architectural Knowledge Product Measures Make a Difference in GSD?

Architectural knowledge (i.e., architectural decisions and underlying rationale) is pivotal in grasping the level of quality of software architectures and the software products that implement these architectures. When the software products are developed in a global software development context, architectural knowledge becomes of even greater importance because it is needed to overcome challenges associated with global software development. We have performed research on a series of software product assessments to identify what key elements that constitute architectural knowledge are actually used in software products. In addition, we have determined whether a difference exists in the use of the key elements in products that were developed using GSD versus products developed using local, single site development. Our results do not show a significant difference between these two groups, but do point at a lack of both view-based architecture descriptions and of the description of solution fragments in products developed using GSD.