Hands-on Software Architecture

Content

Software architecture rarely fails for lack of knowledge, but for lack of orientation: no one sees the big picture at a glance, key decisions live only in people’s heads, and interfaces are documented unclearly. The team then prefers to work around the architecture rather than evolve it.

In this course you build a small but effective set of artefacts on a prepared example system that creates exactly this orientation – vendor-neutral and transferable to any language and framework. The course can be adapted to your team’s needs and, as an in-house training, run on your own system.

– Making architecture visible:

• The Architecture Communication Canvas: presenting building blocks, quality goals and context of an architecture on a single page
• From the outside in: system context, key building blocks and how they interact
• Hands-On: fill in an Architecture Canvas for the example system together

– Capturing architecture decisions:

• Why rather than what: Architecture Decision Records (ADR) as a traceable decision log
• Writing an ADR: context, options, decision and consequences
• Guardrails instead of rigid rules: which rules apply when things change
• Hands-On: write an ADR for a concrete decision in the example system and challenge it as a team

– Documenting interfaces API-first:

• API-first: designing the interface before the implementation
• OpenAPI as a vendor-neutral format for readable, versionable API documentation
• Contracts between teams: how clear interfaces decouple collaboration
• Hands-On: describe an API of the example system API-first with OpenAPI

– Connecting business and tech:

• Architecture as a bridge between business value and technical implementation
• Keeping the artefacts alive in daily work instead of letting them go stale
• Communicating architecture: the same view for business, product and development
• Hands-On: prepare and present the created artefacts for a target audience

By the end of the course you will have produced a filled-in Architecture Canvas, several ADRs and an API-first documentation – and you know how to introduce these artefacts in your own team and keep them alive.

The actual course content may differ from the above depending on the trainer, delivery, duration and the composition of participants.