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The goal of this study is to improve the understanding of how architecting is performed within the field of software-intensive systems. Architects at six different internationally well-known companies have been interviewed to understand their way of working. This paper presents the practices that are found most successful. The context of the different companies as well as the architecting practices are compared and analyzed. Many of the architecting practices found in the study can be explained by the context of the different companies. The study shows that architects at all companies mention a general lack of understanding of software-intensive systems within industries that used to be mechanical. The architects' view of their work is very similar independently of where they work. Also the way architecting is performed is very similar, but surprisingly only one company has a defined process for architecting.

The impact of embedded systems within the automotive industry has grown very rapidly and is today influencing most part of the product development process. This technological change puts high demands on the development process in order for the company to stay competitive. The architecting process is performed during the early phases of the development process when uncertainty is very high. The architecting process will not create immediate value to the end customer, but rather create the architecture on which value in terms of product features can be developed. The architecture will enable value creation when working properly or, in the worst case, prevent value creation. Lean is a product development philosophy that aims at creating value for the end customer. A Lean tool used to improve the value creation within a process is Value Stream Mapping (VSM). VSM has in this work been adapted and evaluated to analyze and identify improvements of the architecting process within embedded systems development. In this paper we present practical experiences from using this adapted VSM. The evaluation was conducted through interviews at two automotive manufacturers. VSM is shown to be a valuable tool to identify waste and thereby improve the architecting process.

This chapter discusses how to deal with scenarios as previous presented by putting a value on flexibility in the system solution. Thereby, it becomes clearer when to focus on short-term solutions and when to keep the long-term evolution of a product line in mind. The approach taken is to evaluate flexibility using a concept called Real Options. The method is motivated and described by using as an example an industrial area where very complex product lines occur, namely automotive embedded systems. To improve the usability of the method, a structured evaluation process is defined to aid practitioners such as developers and architects. The evaluation process provides a way of valuing system designs and enables the practitioner to think about the future in a systematic manner. The value of a flexible design can thereby be quantified, and the proposed process shows how it can be accepted by practitioners within the automotive industry.