The Use of Architectural Patterns in the Agile Software Development of Mobile Applications

Architectural design patterns capture proven solutions of skilled designers to many recurring design problems. However, these patterns may lead to large solutions and overengineering, which are considered alarm signals from the viewpoint of agility . This paper reports the results of two case studies focusing on the adoption of architectural design patterns in agile development of mobile applications for real markets. The Agile Architecture Line Approach and Model were applied in the case studies. The used approach and model strive for a light and robust architecture design framework for mobile applications and services. In this approach, current architectural knowledge concerning available patterns and solutions will be captured during the Architecture Line Definition phase taking place before production. Based on the experience gained from the first case project, more emphasis was laid on capturing the current architectural knowledge about the patterns and solutions proven useful and effective in similar applications running on the used platform. The patterns are augmented before production with suitable supporting information so as to enable them to help inexperienced designers to improve the quality of mobile applications developed in nine-week agile projects in concordance with agile values. This paper demonstrates empirically that architectural design patterns can help to develop viable software architectures and to document them in a useful way, as applied in the challenging context of tough time-to-market demads, the mobile development environment and the J2ME platform. This paper further shows that pattern-based rationale of design decisions and architectural components can be a key success factor in designing mobile software and improving its quality. The empirical results of this paper are presented in a manner enabling practitioners to utilize the proposed solutions in similar projects.