Preserving Architectural Integrity: Addressing the Erosion of Software Design

Raghavendra Sridhar

Abstract: The escalating costs, complexity, and risks of new software development have driven organizations to extend the lifespan of existing systems across multiple decades. This extended utilization necessitates prolonged maintenance periods interspersed with intensive upgrade phases, contributing to the software's continuous evolution. While initial architectural frameworks are established during design, the software undergoes numerous modifications over time, both deliberate and inadvertent, resulting in architecture erosion where implementations diverge from original design intentions. These architectural deviations manifest as various technical issues ranging from minor performance inefficiencies and maintenance challenges to critical quality defects that can render systems completely inoperable or prohibitively difficult to maintain. This paper investigates the fundamental causes and consequences of software architecture erosion, evaluates remediation approaches, and establishes foundational work toward an Architectural Maturity Model Integration framework for assessing organizational capabilities in architectural governance and preservation.

Keywords: System Architecture, Architectural Degradation, System Upkeep, Code Quality, Structural Decay in Software, Inherited Codebases, Architecture Maturity Framework