Is Explainability in the Radar of Software Architects? A Rapid Multivocal Review

With growing system complexity, explainability is being heard more frequently in software development ecosystems. However, it is unclear whether this situation also exists among software architects in industry. This paper reports the design, execution, and findings of a rapid multivocal review exploring perspectives on explainability within current software architecture discourse. Analysis of seven well-known practitioner and academic sources finds that “explainability” is used in discussions about documenting trade-offs, surfacing assumptions, and framing architecture maps, all of which resonate with motivations for comprehensible, adaptable design. These insights may allow the research community to build further bridges with practitioners for sustaining collective system understanding.