Software Coupling Metrics. An Industrial Evaluation at Cadmatic
Structural, logical, and organizational coupling capture different dependency and coordination phenomena in software projects, yet their relationships and practical relevance in industrial monoliths remain unclear. We investigated how these three types of coupling were related, how reliably they identified interdependent components, and the challenges and intrinsic benefits they presented to software practitioners. We conducted a mixed-method study in two large monolithic projects developed at Cadmatic. We extracted structural, logical, and organizational coupling, analyzed their correlations and agreement using non-parametric statistical methods, and complemented the results with practitioner focus groups involving the Cadmatic Development Teams. Structural coupling showed weak correlations with the other metrics, while logical and organizational coupling were strongly correlated. Agreement among the three metrics was generally low. Practitioners reported 17 issues and 8 benefits across the coupling types, with organizational coupling causing the most recurrent coordination and knowledge-sharing challenges. The three coupling types captured complementary architectural and socio-technical phenomena, and no single metric adequately characterized real dependencies in the studied Cadmatic projects. Combining multiple coupling perspectives can better support refactoring, coordination, and architectural decision-making in industrial environments.
Wed 24 JunDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
10:45 - 12:00 | Architectural Smells & Maintenance Research Papers / Software Architecture in Practice / at Theatre 2 Chair(s): Rahime Yılmaz University of Southern Denmark | ||
10:45 20mResearch paper | Architecture in the Cradle: Early Warning of Architectural Decay with ArchGuard Research Papers Haoyu Liu Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Dominik Fuchß Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Sophie Corallo Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Maximilian Hummel , Jan Keim Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Tobias Hey Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) | ||
11:05 20mResearch paper | Efficient Repair of Confidentiality Violations in Software Architectures Research Papers Nils Niehues Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Benjamin Arp , Robert Heinrich Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) | ||
11:25 15mShort-paper | Can an LLM Detect Instances of Microservice Infrastructure Patterns? Research Papers Carlos Eduardo Duarte INESC TEC, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Neil Harrison University of Utah, Filipe Figueiredo Correia University of Porto, Ademar Aguiar INESC TEC, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Pavlina Wurzel Goncalves University of Zurich | ||
11:40 15mPaper | Software Coupling Metrics. An Industrial Evaluation at Cadmatic Software Architecture in Practice Venla Liljas , Alexander Bakhtin University of Oulu, Matteo Esposito University of Oulu, Valentina Lenarduzzi University of Southern Denmark, Davide Taibi University of Southern Denmark and University of Oulu Pre-print | ||