Conducting empirical studies on reference architectures in IT consulting firms

Tight time-to-market needs pushes IT consulting firms (ITCFs) to continuously look for techniques to improve their IT services in general, and the design of software architectures in particular. The use of reference architectures allows ITCFs reusing architectural knowledge and components in a systematic way. In return, ITCFs face the need to assess these reference architectures in order to ensure their quality, return on investment and incremental improvement. Little support exists to help ITCFs to face this challenge. In this work-in-progress paper we present an empirical framework aimed to assess ITCFs’ reference architectures and their use in IT projects by harvesting relevant evidence from the wide spectrum of involved stakeholders. We are currently applying this framework in an ITCF and we report the issues found so far.