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Assessing Architecture Conformance to Coupling-Related Patterns and Practices in Microservices Read chapter Read first chapter

2020 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Teaching Students Software Architecture Decision Making

Authors : Rafael Capilla, Olaf Zimmermann, Carlos Carrillo, Hernán Astudillo

Published in: Software Architecture

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Making the right decisions is challenging for architects on all levels of seniority. Less experienced architects in particular perceive the transition from design problems to their solutions as hard; it is not always clear how to find suitable concepts and technologies, how to compare alternatives, and how to build consensus. Lack of experience makes it difficult to train software engineering students in the identification, selection, and collective evaluation of design alternatives. Moreover, human factors such as cognitive bias make “soft” topics like architecture decisions rather hard to teach. To overcome these issues and let students gain the required experience, a Spanish University ran two experiments. Undergraduate computer science students assumed different roles in collaborative decision-making tasks and design activities. They used a novel decision-modeling tool to capture and challenge the relevant design decisions. This paper describes this new teaching setup and reports on lessons learned.

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Footnotes
1
ISO/IEC/IEEE 42010 – Systems and software engineering – architecture description. Available at: https://​www.​iso.​org/​standard/​50508.​html.
 
2
The IBM e-business reference architecture taught about the importance of architectural decisions; decision capturing was a recommended practice at IBM since, at least, 1998.
 
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Metadata
Title
Teaching Students Software Architecture Decision Making
Authors
Rafael Capilla
Olaf Zimmermann
Carlos Carrillo
Hernán Astudillo
Copyright Year
2020
Book
Software Architecture

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-58922-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-58923-3

Copyright Year: 2020

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58923-3_16

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