Chapter 1: Basic Concepts of Software Architecture

Learning Goals:

• Discuss definitions of software architecture
• Understand and explain the goals and benefits of software architecture
• Understand software architecture as part of the software lifecycle
• Understand software architects’ tasks and responsibilities
• Relate the role of software architects to other stakeholders
• Can explain the correlation between development approaches and software architecture
• Differentiate between short- and long-term goals
• Distinguish explicit statements and implicit assumptions
• Responsibilities of software architects within the greater architectural context
• Differentiate types of IT systems
• Challenges of distributed systems

Chapter 2: Design And Development of Software Architectures

Learning Goals:

• Select and use approaches and heuristics for architecture development
• Design software architectures
• Design and implement cross-cutting concepts
• Describe, explain and appropriately apply important solution patterns
• Explain and use design principles (Abstraction, Modularization etc)
• Manage dependencies between building blocks
• Achieve quality requirements with appropriate approaches and techniques
• Design and define interfaces

Chapter 3: Specification And Communication of Software Architectures

Learning Goals:

• Explain and consider the quality of technical documentation
• Describe and communicate software architectures
• Explain and apply notations/models to describe software architecture
• Explain and use architectural views
• Explain and apply context view of systems
• Document and communicate cross-cutting concepts
• Describe interfaces
• Explain and document architectural decisions
• Use documentation as written communication
• Know additional resources and tools for documentation

Chapter 4: Software Architecture and Quality

Learning Goals:

• Discuss quality models and quality characteristics
• Clarify quality requirements for software architectures
• Qualitative analysis and assessment of software architectures
• Quantitative evaluation of software architectures

Chapter 5: Examples of Software Architectures

Learning Goals:

• Know the relation between requirements, constraints, and solutions
• Know the rationale of a solution’s technical implementation

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Successfully coordinate essential decisions for a software architecture with other project participants from the fields of requirements management, project management, testing, and development.
• Document and communicate software architectures based on architecture patterns and technical concepts.
• Understand the essential steps of software architecture design and to independently implement software architecture for small and medium-sized systems.