ICSA 2026
Mon 22 - Fri 26 June 2026
Wed 24 Jun 2026 11:40 - 11:55 at Theatre 2 - Architectural Smells & Maintenance Chair(s): Rahime Yılmaz

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 Jun

Displayed 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
20m
Research 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
20m
Research 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
15m
Short-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
15m
Paper
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