Software Migration and Architecture Evolution with Industrial Platforms: A Multi-case Study

The software industry increasingly needs to consider architecture evolution in the context of industrial ecosystem platforms. These environments feature a large number third-party offerings with a high variety and complexity of design and technology options. The software architects working on platform migration and in-platform evolution scenarios in such environments require support to find and utilize optimal offerings, ensure design compatibility with various technical and non-technical constraints, and optimize architectures. Based on a multi-case study of three industrial cases, we have derived an architecture knowledge model that provides a basis for supporting software architects in platform migration and in-platform evolution scenarios.