English

Architectural Archipelagos: Technical Debt in Long-Lived Software Research Platforms

Software Engineering 2021-04-20 v1

Abstract

This paper identifies a model of software evolution that is prevalent in large, long-lived academic research tool suites (3L-ARTS). This model results in an "archipelago" of related but haphazardly organized architectural "islands", and inherently induces technical debt. We illustrate the archipelago model with examples from two 3L-ARTS archipelagos identified in literature.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2104.08432,
  title  = {Architectural Archipelagos: Technical Debt in Long-Lived Software Research Platforms},
  author = {Marcelo Schmitt Laser and Duc Minh Le and Joshua Garcia and Nenad Medvidović},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.08432},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:16:03.587Z