Digital Architecture

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/XM_0127

Course Objective

**Knowledge and understanding*
- At the end of the course, students will have gained knowledge about architecturally significant requirements, architecture representation, design, quality and analysis. They understand the drivers behind architectural decisions and the ‘wicked’ nature of architecture design, and appreciate the role of the architect. **Applying knowledge and understanding*
- Students will be able to reason about the architecture of non-trivial software-intensive systems, and apply their knowledge and understanding to a concrete (fictitious) case that involves many stakeholders with different needs and concerns. **Making judgments*
- Students will make their own architectural decisions, and become aware of the rationale involved in making trade-offs and choosing design options among alternatives. They learn to appreciate the design decisions proposed by others. In a serious game setting, students will further experience architectural design decision making. **Communication skills*
- Students present their progress to the other course participants, and engage in debate about their architecture design. They communicate their final architecture design, including the architectural decisions and their rationale, in a document. **Learning skills*
- Students have to coordinate and negotiate team work, and manage a significant workload in the allotted time. Through searching and integrating background material, students build a progressive understanding of the ‘problem domain’ relevant to the case.

Course Content

Students work in groups to design an architecture for a fictitious software-intensive system. They have to develop different representations (called views) of the architecture. These different representations emphasize different concerns of people or organizations that have a stake in the system. The group work is complemented by theory lectures and in-depth sessions.

Teaching Methods

Lectures: two hours per week Group work with a number of assignments; two contact hours per week Tutorials and in-depth sessions: two hours per week. Attendance of the first lecture is compulsory! Students are required to participate in group work. All teams must be present at their scheduled contact hours to present their progress and engage in debate with the other teams. Note that this course is fully taught on campus. Remote participation is not possible.

Method of Assessment

Type: Project assignments, Serious game + survey, Presentation, Written exam. There are three assignments: two group assignments (project deliverables), and one individual (game survey). The course is concluded with an individual, written exam. Weight of each component: The two project assignments will be done as group work and will account jointly for 75% of the final grade. The weighted average score of the assignments should be at least 5.5. The exam accounts for 25% of the grade, and should also be at least 5.5. In case one of the components is insufficient (i.e,

Literature

Len Bass et al., Software Architecture in Practice, 4th edition, 2021

Target Audience

Master Information Sciences Master Computer Science

Custom Course Registration

Registration is compulsory at least 4 weeks before the course starts.Group enrolment takes place in Canvas.

Recommended background knowledge

Software design.

Explanation Canvas

Further information for this course will be made available online (Canvas). All students must be enrolled in the course Canvas community.