Using Systematic Review to Elicit Requirements of Reference Architectures

Software architectures have played a significant role in determining the success of software systems. In this context, reference architectures have emerged as a special type of architecture that contains knowledge of a specific domain, aiming at improving reuse and productivity, facilitating the development of systems of that domain. Considering their relevance, the establishment of reference architectures is very interesting; however, it is not a trivial task, mainly due to the difficulty to identify their requirements, since a range of knowledge is required. Thus, the main objetive of this paper is to propose the use of Systematic Review as a technique to elicit requirements of reference architectures. In order to show the viability of our idea, we present a case study on the software testing domain. Results have pointed that Systematic Review could be considered an efficient and additional technique to gather spread domain knowledge, essential task to the establishment of a more complete reference architecture.