We've been running our software architecture course for a couple of years now and although we've consistently received very positive feedback, we're always looking for ways to improve it. And that's exactly what we've done over the past few weeks.

First of all, the name of the course has been changed to "Software architecture for developers" as it better reflects the intent of the course, which is about broadening people's software development skills and making them more architecturally aware. We want people to better understand how to make design decisions on software projects and be more confident that their choices will work.

The other major change to the course is that the structure now reflects the new organisation of the website, where content is broken down into the following categories:

1. What is software architecture?: This category covers all of the basics such as what software architecture is all about and why it's important.
2. What is the role of a software architect?: This is probably the largest category on the site where you'll find lots of discussion about what software architects (should, in our opinion) do.
3. How do you define software architecture?: This category is about putting software architecture into practice, where you'll find articles about what drives architecture, technology selection, dealing with non-functional requirements and so on.
4. How do you share software architecture?: Having a software architecture is only part of the puzzle and this category is all about collaborating, documenting and sharing it.
5. How do you deliver software architecture?: The final category is about delivering the architecture; covering aspects such as process, methodology, evaluating and testing architectures.

In addition, more exercises have been introduced and we now have more dedicated content to delve into things like creating software architecture documentation and evaluating software architectures. This content *was* included before through a number of supplementary presentations, but the new structure gives these topics their own focus. You can take a (thumbnail sized) peek at the slides and you can find more detailed information about the course at http://www.softwarearchitecturefordevelopers.com. The next public runs of the course this year are the 8th of December (London) and 14th of December (Paris), but you can see the Skills Matter website for other dates.

Feel free to get in touch (e-mail or Twitter) if you have any questions or would like talk about a private/internal run of the course for your team.

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Posted by Simon Brown on 29 October 2009 16:46:15 GMT #