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CONTAaC: Continuous Architecting as Code

Fulltext:


Authors:

Alessandra Somma , Alessio Bucaioni, Patrizio Pelliccione

Research group:

Industrial Software Engineering

Publication Type:

Conference/Workshop Paper

Venue:

23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture

Abstract

Smart ecosystems, such as smart cities, evolve continuously and autonomously, which makes maintaining alignment between architectural descriptions (ADs) and the underlying codebase particularly challenging. Static, design-time ADs cannot capture the decentralized and rapidly changing nature of these environments, especially with the increasing use of AI-driven code generation tools that introduce frequent code-level changes and amplify the risks of architectural drift and erosion. Architecture as Code (AaC) has emerged as a promising approach to mitigate these risks by expressing architectural descriptions in a machine- readable and executable form. However, despite growing industrial interest, AaC adoption remains largely pragmatic and tool- specific, and no unified conceptual framework currently exists. This paper addresses this gap by introducing CONTAaC, a conceptual framework for operationalizing AaC. CONTAaC defines the components and interactions required to represent architectural descriptions as code and to maintain continuous alignment with an evolving ecosystem codebase. To demonstrate feasibility, the framework is instantiated in PyCONTAaC, a Python-based prototype. Its applicability and usefulness were evaluated in two online workshops involving 16 software architecture experts from academia and industry, and by applying PyCONTAaC to a smart mobility use case.

Bibtex

@inproceedings{Somma7353,
author = {Alessandra Somma and Alessio Bucaioni and Patrizio Pelliccione},
title = {CONTAaC: Continuous Architecting as Code},
month = {June},
year = {2026},
booktitle = {23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Architecture},
url = {http://www.es.mdu.se/publications/7353-}
}