  The whiteboard plays a crucial role in the day-to-day lives of software
architects, as they frequently will organize meetings at the whiteboard to
discuss a new architecture, some proposed changes to the architecture, a
mismatch between the architecture and the code, and more. While much has been
studied about software architects, the architectures they produce, and how they
produce them, a detailed understanding of these whiteboards meetings is still
lacking. In this paper, we contribute a mixed-methods study involving
semi-structured interviews and a subsequent survey to understand the
perceptions of software architects on whiteboard architecture meetings. We
focus on five aspects: (1) why do they hold these meetings, what is the impact
of the experience levels of the participants in these meetings, how do the
architects document the meetings, what kinds of changes are made after the
meetings have concluded and their results are moved to implementation, and what
role do digital whiteboards plays? In studying these aspects, we identify 12
observations related to both technical aspects and social aspects of the
meetings. These insights have implications for further research, offer concrete
advice to practitioners, provide guidance for future tool design, and suggest
ways of educating future software architects.
