A practice-driven systematic review of dependency analysis solutions

Abstract

When following architecture-driven strategies to develop large software-intensive systems, the analysis of the dependencies is not an easy task. In this paper, we report a systematic literature review on dependency analysis solutions. Dependency analysis concerns making dependencies due to interconnections between programs or system components explicit. The review is practice-driven because its research questions, execution, and reporting were influenced by the practice of a group of software architects at Philips Healthcare MRI. The review results in an overview and assessment of the state-of-the-art and applicability of dependency analysis. The overview provides insights about definitions related to dependency analysis, the sort of development activities that need dependency analysis, and the classification and description of a number of dependency analysis solutions. The contribution of this paper is for both practitioners and researchers. They can take it as a reference to learn about dependency analysis, match their own practice to the presented results, and to build similar overviews of other techniques and methods for other domains or types of systems.