presentation on software architecture

Software Architecture Guide

When people in the software industry talk about “architecture”, they refer to a hazily defined notion of the most important aspects of the internal design of a software system. A good architecture is important, otherwise it becomes slower and more expensive to add new capabilities in the future.

Like many in the software world, I’ve long been wary of the term “architecture” as it often suggests a separation from programming and an unhealthy dose of pomposity. But I resolve my concern by emphasizing that good architecture is something that supports its own evolution, and is deeply intertwined with programming. Most of my career has revolved about the questions of what good architecture looks like, how teams can create it, and how best to cultivate architectural thinking in our development organizations. This page outlines my view of software architecture and points you to more material about architecture on this site.

A guide to material on martinfowler.com about software architecture.

What is architecture?

People in the software world have long argued about a definition of architecture. For some it's something like the fundamental organization of a system, or the way the highest level components are wired together. My thinking on this was shaped by an email exchange with Ralph Johnson , who questioned this phrasing, arguing that there was no objective way to define what was fundamental, or high level and that a better view of architecture was the shared understanding that the expert developers have of the system design.

Ralph Johnson, speaking at QCon

A second common style of definition for architecture is that it's “the design decisions that need to be made early in a project”, but Ralph complained about this too, saying that it was more like the decisions you wish you could get right early in a project .

His conclusion was that “Architecture is about the important stuff. Whatever that is” . On first blush, that sounds trite, but I find it carries a lot of richness. It means that the heart of thinking architecturally about software is to decide what is important, (i.e. what is architectural), and then expend energy on keeping those architectural elements in good condition. For a developer to become an architect, they need to be able to recognize what elements are important, recognizing what elements are likely to result in serious problems should they not be controlled.

Ralph's email formed the core of my column for IEEE software , which discussed the meaning of software architecture and the role of an architect.

Why does architecture matter?

Architecture is a tricky subject for the customers and users of software products - as it isn't something they immediately perceive. But a poor architecture is a major contributor to the growth of cruft - elements of the software that impede the ability of developers to understand the software. Software that contains a lot of cruft is much harder to modif y, leading to features that arrive more slowly and with more defects.

This situation is counter to our usual experience. We are used to something that is "high quality" as something that costs more. For some aspects of software, such as the user-experience, this can be true. But when it comes to the architecture, and other aspects of internal quality, this relationship is reversed. High internal quality leads to faster delivery of new features , because there is less cruft to get in the way.

While it is true that we can sacrifice quality for faster delivery in the short term, before the build up of cruft has an impact, people underestimate how quickly the cruft leads to an overall slower delivery. While this isn't something that can be objectively measured, experienced developers reckon that attention to internal quality pays off in weeks not months.

Read more…

At OSCON in 2015 I gave a brief talk (14 min) on what architecture is and why it matters.

Application Architecture

The important decisions in software development vary with the scale of the context that we're thinking about. A common scale is that of an application, hence "application architecture".

The first problem with defining application architecture is that there's no clear definition of what an application is. My view is that applications are a social construction :

• A body of code that's seen by developers as a single unit
• A group of functionality that business customers see as a single unit
• An initiative that those with the money see as a single budget

Such a loose definition leads to many potential sizes of an application, varying from a few to a few hundred people on the development team. (You'll notice I look at size as the amount of people involved, which I feel is the most useful way of measuring such things.) The key difference between this and enterprise architecture is that there is a significant degree of unified purpose around the social construction.

Application Boundary

One of the undecided problems of software development is deciding what the boundaries of a piece of software is. (Is a browser part of an operating system or not?) Many proponents of Service Oriented Architecture believe that applications are going away - thus future enterprise software development will be about assembling services together.

I don't think applications are going away for the same reasons why application boundaries are so hard to draw. Essentially applications are social constructions :

by Martin Fowler

11 Sep 2003

team organization enterprise architecture application architecture

Microservices Guide

The microservice architectural pattern is an approach to developing a single application as a suite of small services, each running in its own process and communicating with lightweight mechanisms, often an HTTP resource API. These services are built around business capabilities and independently deployable by fully automated deployment machinery. There is a bare minimum of centralized management of these services, which may be written in different programming languages and use different data storage technologies. While their advantages have made them very fashionable in the last few years, they come with the costs of increasing distribution, weakened consistency and require maturity in operational management.

application architecture web services microservices

Serverless Architectures

Serverless architectures are application designs that incorporate third-party “Backend as a Service” (BaaS) services, and/or that include custom code run in managed, ephemeral containers on a “Functions as a Service” (FaaS) platform. By using these ideas, and related ones like single-page applications, such architectures remove much of the need for a traditional always-on server component. Serverless architectures may benefit from significantly reduced operational cost, complexity, and engineering lead time, at a cost of increased reliance on vendor dependencies and comparatively immature supporting services.

by Mike Roberts

22 May 2018

popular application architecture

Micro Frontends

Good frontend development is hard. Scaling frontend development so that many teams can work simultaneously on a large and complex product is even harder. In this article we'll describe a recent trend of breaking up frontend monoliths into many smaller, more manageable pieces, and how this architecture can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of teams working on frontend code. As well as talking about the various benefits and costs, we'll cover some of the implementation options that are available, and we'll dive deep into a full example application that demonstrates the technique.

by Cam Jackson

19 Jun 2019

application architecture front-end microservices

GUI Architectures

18 Jul 2006

design application architecture front-end

Presentation Domain Data Layering

One of the most common ways to modularize an information-rich program is to separate it into three broad layers: presentation (UI), domain logic (aka business logic), and data access. So you often see web applications divided into a web layer that knows about handling HTTP requests and rendering HTML, a business logic layer that contains validations and calculations, and a data access layer that sorts out how to manage persistent data in a database or remote services.

26 Aug 2015

team organization database encapsulation application architecture web development

Catalog of Patterns of Distributed Systems

Distributed systems provide a particular challenge to program. They often require us to have multiple copies of data, which need to keep synchronized. Yet we cannot rely on processing nodes working reliably, and network delays can easily lead to inconsistencies. Despite this, many organizations rely on a range of core distributed software handling data storage, messaging, system management, and compute capability. These systems face common problems which they solve with similar solutions. In 2020 Unmesh Joshi began collecting these solutions as patterns, publishing them on this site as he developed them. In 2023 these were published in the book Patterns of Distributed Systems. This page links to short summaries of each pattern, with deep links to the relevant chapters for the online eBook publication on oreilly.com

Unmesh Joshi

23 Nov 2023

application architecture microservices

Feature Toggles (aka Feature Flags)

Feature Toggles (often also refered to as Feature Flags) are a powerful technique, allowing teams to modify system behavior without changing code. They fall into various usage categories, and it's important to take that categorization into account when implementing and managing toggles. Toggles introduce complexity. We can keep that complexity in check by using smart toggle implementation practices and appropriate tools to manage our toggle configuration, but we should also aim to constrain the number of toggles in our system.

by Pete Hodgson

popular continuous delivery application architecture

Modularizing React Applications with Established UI Patterns

Established UI patterns are often underutilized in the frontend development world, despite their proven effectiveness in solving complex problems in UI design. This article explores the application of established UI building patterns to the React world, with a refactoring journey code example to showcase the benefits. The emphasis is placed on how layering architecture can help organize the React application for improved responsiveness and future changes.

by Juntao QIU | 邱俊涛

16 Feb 2023

application architecture front-end

Enterprise Architecture

While application architecture concentrates on the architecture within some form of notional application boundary, enterprise architecture looks architecture across a large enterprise. Such an organization is usually too large to group all its software in any kind of cohesive grouping, thus requiring coordination across teams with many codebases, that have developed in isolation from each other, with funding and users that operate independently of each other.

Much of enterprise architecture is about understanding what is worth the costs of central coordination, and what form that coordination should take. At one extreme is a central architecture group that must approve all architectural decision for every software system in the enterprise. Such groups slow down decision making and cannot truly understand the issues across such a wide portfolio of systems, leading to poor decision-making. But the other extreme is no coordination at all, leading to teams duplicating effort, inability for different system to inter-operate, and a lack of skills development and cross-learning between teams.

Like most people with an agile mindset, I prefer to err on the side of decentralization, so will head closer to the rocks of chaos rather than suffocating control. But being on that side of the channel still means we have to avoid the rocks, and a way to maximize local decision making in a way that minimizes the real costs involved.

Enterprise Architects Join the Team

Enterprise Architecture groups often get separated from day to day development. This can lead to their knowledge of development work getting out of date and development teams not taking a broad company-wide perspective. Having seen this happen frequently my colleague (Thoughtworks CTO) Rebecca argues that enterprise architects can be much more effective by joining development teams.

by Rebecca Parsons

ieeeSoftware enterprise architecture

Creating an integrated business and technology strategy

To make fruitful use of technology, we need to align our technology thinking with underlying business plans. A technology strategy can drive this alignment, providing it properly integrates business and technology. We have developed a conceptual framework to help us with this strategic thinking, based on recognizing common aspects of strategic initiatives, leading us to identify eleven prevalent strategic directions. For each direction we outline the key business questions that they raise, and the investigations that we need to do to explore the technology implications. We've found that this framework leads not just to more effective technology strategies, but allows technology to inform business thinking, developing new revenue streams.

by Sarah Taraporewalla

24 Aug 2023

enterprise architecture technical leadership

Products Over Projects

Software projects are a popular way of funding and organizing software development. They organize work into temporary, build-only teams and are funded with specific benefits projected in a business case. Product-mode instead uses durable, ideate-build-run teams working on a persistent business issue. Product-mode allows teams to reorient quickly, reduces their end-to-end cycle time, and allows validation of actual benefits by using short-cycle iterations while maintaining the architectural integrity of their software to preserve their long-term effectiveness.

by Sriram Narayan

20 Feb 2018

enterprise architecture team organization

The Architect Elevator — Visiting the upper floors

Many large organizations see their IT engine separated by many floors from the executive penthouse, which also separates business and digital strategy from the vital work of carrying it out. The primary role of an architect is to ride the elevators between the penthouse and engine room, stopping wherever is needed to support these digital efforts: automating software manufacturing, minimizing up-front decision making, and influencing the organization alongside technology evolution.

by Gregor Hohpe

24 May 2017

enterprise architecture

The Role of an Enterprise Architect in a Lean Enterprise

When an organization takes on an agile mindset, enterprise architecture doesn't go away, but the role of enterprise architects changes. Enterprise Architects no longer make choices, but help others make the right choice and then radiate that information. Enterprise Architects still need to form a vision, but then need to build bridges between teams to build communities of learning. These will allow teams to explore new approaches and learn from each other, with Enterprise Architects as partners in that growth.

by Kevin Hickey

30 Nov 2015

agile enterprise architecture technical leadership lean

Enterprise Integration Using REST

Most internal REST APIs are one-off APIs purpose built for a single integration point. In this article, I'll discuss the constraints and flexibility that you have with nonpublic APIs, and lessons learned from doing large scale RESTful integration across multiple teams.

by Brandon Byars

18 Nov 2013

application integration web services enterprise architecture

Software architecture diagramming and patterns

How to design software architecture: Top tips and best practices

Lucid Content

Reading time: about 9 min

You wouldn’t want to jump into a project without a solid plan, and software architecture design is no different. By making this process more effective, you can account for all of your requirements properly and give stakeholders the opportunity to provide their input.

Using technical visuals and a careful planning process, you can outline your software architecture and design before you get started on a prototype. 

What is software architecture design? 

Software architecture design uses programming knowledge to plan the high-level design of software so that detail can be added later, allowing software teams to sketch out the big picture and begin preparing a prototype. 

By following software architecture design tips and best practices, software developers can think through their software’s characteristics and determine how to design software architecture. 

How to design software architecture in 5 steps

1. have a clear understanding of your requirements.

Every design you embark on will have both functional and non-functional requirements. These requirements guide your software architecture along and allow you to finish the project with an end product that your stakeholders are satisfied with.

Without a clear understanding of these requirements from the beginning, your team runs the risk of getting lost, emphasizing the wrong requirements at the expense of others, or using an inefficient amount of internal resources. 

Gain a better understanding through visuals—follow these steps to map out your requirements in an intelligent diagramming platform like Lucidchart:

Map your functional requirements: You can use verbs to help you cluster nouns together. For example, verbs such as “view” and “edit” can link “account” or “profile” to each other in a mind map of functional areas. 

Consider non-functional requirements: While you’re working on your mind map, you can jot down your non-functional requirements for later. A requirement like “performance” is key but is probably too abstract to place on the mind map. 

Your requirements should be used to shape your scope of work and plan out your project.

2. Start thinking about each component

Let’s face it—with the powerful influence your functional requirements have on your project, your design and technology options may be already decided once you’ve mapped out your requirements. 

Without getting too far ahead of yourself thinking about implementation, you’ll need to find out which requirements pose significant challenges to your design or your project plan. Some requirements may actually be impossible under certain assumptions or choices. 

Start with a “perfect world”: What would your design look like if you could create it perfectly? 

Consider and document the implications of your requirements: Start a working draft with your team and develop it gradually. First, you want to look at what your requirements imply for your design—for instance, where individual items from your stakeholder wish list may contradict each other or be in conflict with other functional and non-functional requirements. 

Wait and design the final architecture later: In all likelihood, your architecture planning will change throughout this process, so don’t expect the first draft to resemble the final result. 

3. Divide your architecture into slices

Your architecture design, naturally, moves into a planning phase as you decide how you’ll deliver on your design. Dividing your architecture into slices can help you craft this plan in a way that delivers value to users and appropriately plans your use of development resources. 

It’s helpful to think about slicing a cake. Most people slice a cake vertically, through each layer. Let’s say a full slice has frosting, filling, and two or three layers of sponge cake inside. That vertical slice has a little of everything. Cakes can also be sliced horizontally, separating individual layers. 

Similarly, if each slice is a story used to plan your software architecture, then there are layers— slicing the cake vertically creates stories centered around individual features, while slicing horizontally reveals individual components. You need both horizontal and vertical thinking for your project. 

Agile focuses on vertical slices, allowing your team to quickly deliver value. This approach provides customers with product progress quickly and the development team with feedback on each layer behind a feature. One vertical slice of your software architecture for an e-commerce website might be the checkout process. 

In your “checkout” vertical cake slice, you can see the data layer storing the checkout information, the middle layer API, and the top layer user interface that shoppers see. With vertical slices, you can decide which features to deliver and choose iterative pieces.

By diagramming the layers involved in your software architecture project, you can visualize the entire piece and how each layer influences other layers. As you plan, take individual Agile cake slices and diagram how they connect.

4. Prototype

Always create a prototype. Prototypes allow you to fail fast and early—providing quick feedback and allowing you to discover your proof-of-concept. This is an important part of validating your work and checking your assumptions to make sure they’re valid and thorough. 

As you create your prototype, remember that the first few iterations will never be perfect and no final iteration will be completely perfect, either. One of the advantages of prototyping is that it doesn’t set itself up as a finished product and most people instinctively go into a prototype process expecting at least some rough edges. 

Take advantage of the prototype phase. This is no substitute for testing, but it is a crucial part of the testing you’ll need to do. 

Keep a careful revision history : Of course, if you don’t document what you learn from prototyping, you run the risk of repeating your mistakes. Write everything down—thoroughly document your design decisions and the changes you make along the way.

Have a single source of truth: You don’t want multiple changes and different versions to sidetrack your progress, so set up robust version control focused on a single source for your documentation. 

Diagram your prototypes: You can use diagrams to help you manage prototype changes and visualize the differences between each version. 

5. Identify and quantify non-functional requirements

In addition to the functional requirements, you’ll have non-functional requirements to take into consideration. These requirements are as essential to design as your functional requirements are because they define the system’s characteristics. 

Non-functional requirements are often high-level quality requirements for the entire project, but not always. Your system may have non-functional requirements that are specific to just part of your software architecture. As such, you have to be prepared to loop in stakeholders for local non-functional requirements. For instance, a particular vertical slice of the project may interest the customer service team in particular, and that team may have their own expectations about those non-functional requirements.

It’s not enough to say you want performance, portability, or scalability, though. Non-functional requirements must also be quantified. No project can have absolutely perfect performance: “performance” must be specified and limited in order to meet other requirements. 

Since your non-functional requirements play a role in shaping your design, you can’t avoid defining them. Here are some other requirements you may want to consider:

Performance: How well your entire system performs as well as individual slices or layers

Scalability: Current and future potential to scale your system along with your needs

Portability: Your data portability as well as the potential portability of components of your system, if applicable or necessary

Extensibility: Accounting for your system’s and company’s future growth, how well your system can adapt and the effort involved with adaptation

Compliance: Another essential factor—and one with a sizable impact on your overall project design

Diagramming your non-functional requirements can help your team see how you’re quantifying them while also placing specific requirements in relevant contexts. Although you don’t have to worry about optimizing everything just yet, you do also need to consider what effort and resources might be necessary to optimize these non-functional requirements later. 

Best practices for software architecture design

As you undertake your design project, these best practices will help you stay grounded in good design principles. 

Visualize your design 

Using visuals throughout your design concept work as well as your implementation allows your team to see the high-level perspective behind your design. Diagrams are a great way to visualize processes and different aspects of your design choices.

Don’t choose patterns 

Keep your design process focused on the bigger picture without resorting to patterns as a starting point. Instead of using patterns, stay very high-level with a view of overall components to reduce the risk of over-engineering your systems. 

Remember that the first design is only the first iteration 

With your first design, you’re getting a better idea of the technical challenges and obstacles you’ll face with your architecture development. Don’t expect the first design to be anything more than a prototype! 

Don’t worry—your architecture design will grow and develop, allowing you to figure out more of the details over time. 

Be cautious of scope creep 

Even if it seems tempting to allow your scope to grow, scope creep comes at the expense of your other requirements and can eat up necessary resources. To stop scope creep, establish a working draft project plan that accounts for your requirements and have a conversation with stakeholders about limits to non-functional requirements. You don’t want any unmet expectations to adversely affect your project. 

Keep boundaries and interfaces in mind

As you plan your design, think about interfaces between components and note the boundaries of your system. Start assigning responsibilities so when you work on your prototypes and next iterations, you have this information available for easy reference.

Improve your software architecture design now

Software architecture design is more effective when there is a plan, stakeholder input, and the right approach to outlining requirements for the project. Don’t skimp on this early planning, and your efforts can be rewarded with a smoother project experience.

Use Lucidchart to design your next software architecture.

Lucidchart, a cloud-based intelligent diagramming application, is a core component of Lucid Software's Visual Collaboration Suite. This intuitive, cloud-based solution empowers teams to collaborate in real-time to build flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, customer journey maps, and more. Lucidchart propels teams forward to build the future faster. Lucid is proud to serve top businesses around the world, including customers such as Google, GE, and NBC Universal, and 99% of the Fortune 500. Lucid partners with industry leaders, including Google, Atlassian, and Microsoft. Since its founding, Lucid has received numerous awards for its products, business, and workplace culture. For more information, visit lucidchart.com.

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How to Create a Successful Architecture Presentation Board

• Updated: December 31, 2023

Architecture is as much about effective communication as it is about innovative design. At the heart of this communicative process lies the architecture presentation board, a tool quintessential for architects to convey their vision, ideas, and concepts.

These boards are more than mere visual aids; they are the narrative bridge between an architect’s imaginative conception and the practical world where these ideas may take shape. They are not just a requirement for academic submissions or professional proposals but are a fundamental aspect of the architectural design process.

They serve as a canvas where ideas are visualized, concepts are explained, and designs are brought to life for various audiences, be it clients, peers, competition judges, or the general public.

Understanding how to effectively create and present these boards is crucial, as a well-crafted presentation not only showcases a finished scheme but also reflects the thought process, attention to detail, and the authors ability to communicate complex ideas succinctly and visually.

What are architecture presentation boards used for?

Architecture presentation boards serve several different purposes:

• Students use them to present work to their professors and peers.
• Professionals use them to present designs to clients, committees, shareholders, and exhibitions.
• They may be a means to win a commission, or they may help to take a project into the next stage. 

What is the purpose of an architecture presentation board?

Architecture presentation boards are a tool to showcase your work. They are a way to draw your viewers into your design process and methods, providing an overall summary and vision for the project. You are communicating your design and showcasing your artistic skills, and your sense as a designer. 

Every successful project has a central concept, a “big picture” theme that gives it purpose. When you look at your project, what is that big idea?

As it is central to your whole project, this will guide you as you prioritize your work and determine the flow of your ideas. The primary purpose of your project is to communicate this central concept in the best way possible.  

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How do you layout an architecture presentation board, 01 – structure/order.

Before you begin laying out your presentation board, think about the main points you want to convey. From there, determine what images and graphics will best represent those ideas. Gather all of the information you will need, making a note of what graphics and text you will need to communicate your ideas.

Remember, you are essentially telling a story, so pay close attention to the flow of the narrative as you arrange your elements. Consider the beginning, middle, and end of the story you want to tell.

Depending on the guidelines you are given, you may present your boards side-by-side, as separate boards presented in a sequence, or as one big poster. If no strict parameters are in place, figure out what structure and layout will tell your story the best. While a series of boards will logically convey your story, one big board is often the easiest option.

02 – Orientation

Will your presentation board be oriented in portrait or landscape? Sometimes you will get to make that call, but many times it will be determined for you by your director, client, or professor. Make sure you know beforehand what the parameters are.

If you get to choose, give it some careful thought. Which orientation will give your graphics the room they need to be the most impactful? Which orientation gives your whole project a natural flow for your narrative? 

03 – Size

Much like orientation, you may or may not get to decide what size your presentation boards will be. You will often have restrictions that limit you to a specific board size and a certain number of boards.

Make sure you know your limitations before you start working on your layout. Your boards should all be the same size to achieve continuity.

You can use a combination of different sizes to produce a board of equivalent size. For example, a combination of two A1  boards will add up to an A0 board. 

04 – Layout

The most common way to organize your layout is by using a grid. Using a grid will help keep the boards in your project consistent.

If you are using InDesign , you can achieve this uniformity by creating a master page that acts as a template for your whole project.

Templates are useful because they can save you a great deal of time, and they ensure uniformity throughout your project. Your grid should include spaces for titles, numbering, your name, and any other information that will repeat on each board.

Before you start laying out your actual boards, sketch out various configurations so you can determine what will work best. You can do a small-scale sketch to get the basic idea of the flow of each board. This allows you to change the arrangement of the elements before you commit to anything on your boards.

You can do this initial phase using software or sketching it out on paper.

After you have determined what type of layout you want to use, estimate how much space you will need for each element on the page. Each graphic needs to be large enough to have an impact. Determine how much space you would like to leave in between each graphic.

Use equal spacing throughout your project to create continuity. Here is an excellent tutorial on planning your layout using Indesign:

The layout of each board should show the relationship between all of the elements. It should be clear to read and follow a logical left-to-right and top-to-bottom progression.

Imagine a viewer looking at your presentation. What do you want them to see first? What is the best way to make them understand your project? Does your layout achieve this?

You should also pay attention to the relationship between each board. Is there a logical progression from one board to the next? Does the sequence make sense? If you will not display the boards in a configuration that makes them all visible at once, make sure you number them, so your viewers follow the correct sequence.

Don’t feel the need to fill every square inch of your presentation board. Leave enough space so that it doesn’t look too busy or cluttered. On the other hand, don’t leave too much space either, or it will look like you didn’t finish the board, didn’t have enough material for the board, or that you didn’t work very hard.

05 – Visual Hierarchy

Some of your images need to garner more attention than others. Consider all of the graphics and text you will be using. Which images are central to your main idea?

The images that are essential for communicating your vision should take up more space in the grid. You should have an image that people can see from a distance and other images that they can see from up close. This creates a visual hierarchy.

What is the most important aspect of your project? Make that the element people can see from a distance. There are ways to accomplish this in addition to making it the largest element on the board. For example, you can use color to draw the viewer’s eye to a particular graphic, especially if the rest of the board is monochromatic.

06 – Background

The background of your presentation board should be simple. This allows the viewer to see all of the elements without the distraction of a busy background. You don’t want anything to detract from the critical details of the board. Your graphics and text should be the primary focus; don’t use bold colors or textures that will detract from that.

A white, or even light gray, background will make your graphics and text stand out. It will give your presentation a professional look that isn’t too busy. You can use other colors if they help convey your central concept; just make sure the background is plain enough that the viewer focuses on the design, not the background.

Be very selective when using a black background, as it may make the text harder to read, and your graphics may not stand out as much as you would like them to.

Whatever color you choose for your background, use it to your advantage.  Effective use of negative space can make your design look clean and professional.

07 – Color Scheme

Many professionals and students stick with black, white, and gray for presentation boards. While this can give your boards a professional look, don’t be afraid to add a pop of color. While sticking with greyscale may seem like a safe choice, there is a risk of blacks and greys making your design seem cold and lifeless.

Think about ways you can use color to bring life to your design. You may opt to add just one color, such as green for landscaping, to provide contrast to an otherwise monochromatic presentation. You could also bring in an additional color to represent a particular building material (brick, glass, wood, etc.).

You can also choose a brighter, more eye-catching color, such as yellow or orange, as a feature in your diagrams . Whatever you choose, use the same color across all of your boards to maintain a consistent flow.

If color is one of the main focuses of your project, or if there are details that you cannot adequately represent in greyscale, then you should feel free to delve deeper into the world of color. Don’t limit yourself to merely an accent color in this case, but don’t take it too far and make the mistake of overusing color to the point where it is a distraction.

08 – Font

All of the text throughout your project should be in one font. Don’t use font style as an avenue for creativity; it is more important to make sure the font style and size produce a readable, consistent product.

Sans serif fonts, such as Helvetica or Futura, will give your presentation a clean, minimalist look.

Avoid script or handwriting fonts, as they will not give your boards a clean, professional look. Keep the color of your font dark (black or dark grey work well) to provide contrast to a light background.

Whichever font you select, make sure the style and size are readable for your viewers before you finalize your boards. The best way to do this is to print out your text on an A3 paper, pin it up somewhere, and stand back to see how it will look when it is displayed.

A full breakdown, list, and description of the most popular fonts for architecture can be found here .

09 – Title

The most common placement for a title bar is the top left since your board will most likely follow a left-to-right and top-to-bottom progression. Many successful and professional-looking boards have titles at the top right, at the bottom, or somewhere in the middle.

Choose the position that makes the most sense for your project. As with other design decisions, make sure it does not distract the viewer from seeing the big picture.  

Make sure the title placement is consistent from board to board. This consistency will be both visually appealing and professional.

10 – Text

Keep your explanations concise. People are not going to spend much time reading lengthy descriptions, so only include relevant information and keep it short. Remember that your text boxes are part of your visual hierarchy, so utilize the size and alignment to complement your graphics. Consider the various ways you can align the text within the text box. What flows best? What is pleasing to the eye?

Aside from your title, do not use all capitals in your text. Your work will look more professional and be easier to read if you stick with the standard rules of capitalization.

Whenever possible, use a graphic or a sketch, rather than an explanation, to portray an idea. Since this is a graphic presentation, you want your graphics to tell the story, not your text. Include a concise statement that highlights the features of your design. This is basically your sales pitch; lengthy explanations will make you lose your audience.

11 – Image Selection

The selection of images is a critical part of putting your presentation board together. The graphics you choose can make or break your entire design presentation.

You want to select the images that best convey the important details of your project. If you use too many images, your presentation may appear cluttered and confusing. If you use too few images, it may look like you did not put much effort into your presentation.

Over the course of your project, you have generated countless sketches, renderings, models, and drawings. Resist the temptation to include everything just to show how hard you worked. Keep your big picture in mind and determine which images will directly show or best support that idea.

12 – Models

On occasion, a physical model, or even several models showing different aspects of your design, may be required for your presentation board. This is an additional means of communicating your vision to your viewers.

There are several materials you can choose for your model. Card and cardboard are inexpensive and come in various weights, finishes, and colors.

Foam board is also available in various widths and thicknesses. It is generally white, but it also comes in other colors. It is very lightweight and sturdy, making it an ideal material for your presentation board.

Balsawood is another good option. It is easy to work with and comes in varying weights. The material you choose will depend on the look you are trying to achieve as well as how much weight you can adhere to your presentation board.  

Your model pieces can be cut by hand with tools such as an X-Acto knife or a scalpel. If you have access to a laser cutter, it will save you some time and give you more precision.

13 – Time Constraints

Give yourself enough time to produce a well-thought-out, effective, visually appealing presentation. You spent a considerable amount of time on your design; it would be a shame to rush through your presentation boards. Give each part of the process enough attention so that your final product really showcases and highlights your talent and hard work. 

Time management is critical when working on a big project like this. It can seem overwhelming at first, so split the project into smaller sub-tasks to make it more manageable. Give yourself a deadline for each of those smaller tasks. Make a schedule that shows which tasks you will accomplish each day. Make sure you leave yourself a little wiggle room in case anything unexpected comes up.

What should be included in an architecture presentation board?

Unless you receive explicit instructions regarding what to include in your presentation boards, it is up to you which elements make the cut. When you are deciding what elements to incorporate into your project, reflect on what will best explain your design.

When someone completely unfamiliar with your project is looking at your boards, what do you want them to see?

When deciding what text to include in your project, make sure you include an introduction, your design brief, and any applicable precedents. In addition, you will want to include concise textual explanations as needed throughout your presentation.

For your graphic representations, you want to include the basics: elevations, floor plans, and sections. You can represent these with 3d drawings, perspectives, or renders.  You may also include some key features of your design that make it unique, and in addition to highlighting the finished product, select elements that show your concept and design development.

Some additional tips:

• When choosing a perspective view, select one that highlights the best aspects of your design. This graphic is usually the most prominent picture on the presentation board. The hero image!
• You will want to include at least two different elevation views so your viewers can get a sense of the bigger picture.
• Don’t be afraid to include sketches. If you include some sketches that show the progression from a simple idea to the final product, you can communicate your vision as well as your process.

When you are adding all of these elements to your presentation board, make sure each graphic representation of the plan has the same orientation. If one picture has north pointed in one direction and another picture has north pointed in a different direction, it can be disorienting for the viewer.

Likewise, each graphic should use the same scale unless there is one picture that is bigger than the others for the purpose of visual hierarchy.

There is one obvious detail that you may inadvertently overlook. Make sure your name is on your presentation board. If you have more than one board, put your name on each one. The name is in the bottom right-hand corner, but it can also appear in the title bar.

Types of Architectural Presentation Boards

Organizing your architectural presentation sheets into specific categories can be a very effective way to present your projects. There are several types of architectural presentation boards, and the following tips can help you present your project at different stages:

C onceptual board

Concept sheets are a type of presentation board that showcase your initial ideas and approach to a project. They typically include information about the concept behind the project and how design decisions were made. It is important to submit concept sheets before presenting your architectural drawings and renderings.

When creating concept sheets, you may want to include conceptual collages and diagrams to help explain your ideas to the audience. These can be created using 3D modeling software or programs like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. The goal of concept sheets is to clearly and simply present the various stages of your project to the review panel.

Site a nalysis board

Before beginning a project, architects perform thorough analyses to determine the needs, conditions, and limitations of the site. This analysis serves as the foundation for the concept development. Site analysis boards may include site analysis, urban scale analysis, sociocultural analysis, analysis of physical conditions, and environmental analysis.

It is important to conduct extensive research and present your findings in a clear and organized way, as analysis boards can help reinforce the concepts presented in your architectural drawings.

It is also important to keep in mind that the jury members may have difficulty understanding analysis presented alongside the architectural drawings.

Technical / Detail Board

Technical drawings are a crucial aspect of architectural projects, as they help to depict the structural elements of a design and guide the construction process. It is important to present technical drawings in a clear and organized manner, particularly in application projects and student projects.

Technical drawing boards should typically include a master plan at a scale of 1/5000 or 1/1000, as well as site plans and floor plans at a scale of 1/500, and sections and elevations at a scale of 1/200. Detail drawings, including system sections and details at scales of 1/20, 1/10, and 1/5, should also be included on the technical drawing boards.

These drawings will help to provide a more complete understanding of the project to the review panel.

Professional Boards

While student projects and competition entries are evaluated by a panel of judges, in professional practice, the client serves as the “jury” for your work. Instead of preparing presentation boards in the same way you would for school or competition projects, it is important to create presentations that will appeal to clients.

The most important factor for most clients is the design of the living space, so it can be helpful to focus on renderings and plain plans rather than technical drawings. The visual appeal of your presentation boards, including the color scheme and atmosphere in the renderings, as well as your ability to effectively present and explain your ideas to the client, will also be important factors in their evaluation of your work.

Programs, Software, and Tools

There are several software applications you can use to build your presentation board. Choose one that you are already familiar with, so you aren’t trying to learn new software while you are doing your layout. That is an added stressor that you just don’t need!

InDesign, Illustrator, and Photoshop are excellent programs, but if you need something a bit more simple, Microsoft Word, Pages, Powerpoint, or Keynote will also work. 

InDesign was designed for making presentations. AutoCAD was designed for constructing plans. Photoshop was designed for editing raster images. Illustrator was designed for creating vector art. While some people are able to make their whole presentation using Illustrator, Photoshop, or even PowerPoint, it makes more sense to use each piece of software in a way that takes advantage of its strengths.

You can import files from AutoCAD, Photoshop, and Illustrator into InDesign and take advantage of the strengths of each application.

Before you delve into your own presentation board, do some research. Look online for examples and make a note of the elements you like. Combine that inspiration with your creativity to produce a stunning presentation. 

Here are some websites you can use for inspiration:

The President’s Medals Winners

Pinterest – Architectural Presentation Boards

World Architecture Students Community – Presentation Boards

FAQ’s about architecture presentation boards

How do you present an architecture presentation.

Here are some general guidelines for presenting an architecture presentation:

• Define your objective : Clearly define the purpose of your presentation and the main ideas or arguments you want to convey.
• Organize your material : Gather and organize your material in a logical and coherent manner that supports your objectives. This may include drawings, images, models, diagrams, and text.
• Create a clear and visually appealing layout : Use a layout that is easy to follow and that effectively presents your material. Consider using contrast, hierarchy, and balance to guide the viewer’s eye.
• Practice your presentation : Practice your presentation to ensure that you are comfortable with your material and can deliver it in a clear and confident manner.
• Use visual aids effectively : Use visual aids such as slides, drawings, and models to supplement your presentation and help illustrate your points. Avoid overloading the viewer with too much information and focus on presenting the most important ideas.
• Engage your audience : Engage your audience by using a variety of presentation techniques, such as asking questions, using storytelling, and using interactive elements.
• Conclude with a summary : Recap the main points of your presentation and conclude with a clear and concise summary.

Why do architects use presentation boards?

As explained above, architecture presentation boards are commonly used by architects and designers to visually communicate their ideas and designs.

Presentation boards typically consist of a series of large format panels that can be mounted on a wall or a stand. These panels can be used to display a variety of materials, such as drawings, images, models, diagrams, and text.

Presentation boards are an effective way to present a comprehensive overview of a project or design concept, and they can be used to showcase the key features and characteristics of a project.

They are often used in design reviews, presentations, exhibitions, and competitions , and can be a useful tool for architects and designers to communicate their ideas to a variety of audiences, including clients, stakeholders, and reviewers.

Presentation boards can be customized to suit the specific needs of the project and can be designed to effectively convey the key ideas and concepts of the design, enabling architects and designers to effectively present and showcase their work in a clear and visually appealing manner.

To Sum Up…

Even the most exceptional design concept can appear uninspired if you do not present it well.

You have spent weeks, maybe even months, on your design. Don’t sell yourself short by not communicating your vision well. The professional, creative, and aesthetic quality of your presentation will affect how your work is received.

Every design project begins with site analysis … start it with confidence for free!.

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Fundamentals of Software Architecture

In the world of technology, starting from small children to young people and starting from young to old people everyone using their Smartphones, Laptops, Computers, PDAs etc to solve any simpler or complex task online by using some software programs, there everything looks very simple to user. Also that’s the purpose of a good software to provide good quality of services in a user-friendly environment. There the overall abstraction of any software product makes it looks like simple and very easier for user to use. But in back if we will see building a complex software application includes complex processes which comprises of a number of elements of which coding is a small part.

After gathering of business requirement by a business analyst then developer team starts working on the Software Requirement Specification (SRS) , sequentially it undergoes various steps like testing, acceptance, deployment, maintenance etc. Every software development process is carried out by following some sequential steps which comes under this Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

In the design phase of Software Development Life Cycle the software architecture is defined and documented. So in this article we will clearly discuss about one of significant element of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) i.e the Software Architecture.

Software Architecture : Software Architecture defines fundamental organization of a system and more simply defines a structured solution. It defines how components of a software system are assembled, their relationship and communication between them. It serves as a blueprint for software application and development basis for developer team.

Software architecture defines a list of things which results in making many things easier in the software development process.

• A software architecture defines structure of a system.
• A software architecture defines behavior of a system.
• A software architecture defines component relationship.
• A software architecture defines communication structure.
• A software architecture balances stakeholder’s needs.
• A software architecture influences team structure.
• A software architecture focuses on significant elements.
• A software architecture captures early design decisions.

Characteristics of Software Architecture : Architects separate architecture characteristics into broad categories depending upon operation, rarely appearing requirements, structure etc. Below some important characteristics which are commonly considered are explained.

• Availability
• Performance
• Reliability
• Low fault tolerance
• Scalability
• Configurability
• Extensibility
• Supportability
• Portability
• Maintainability
• Accessibility
• Feasibility

SOLID principles of Software architecture : Each character of the word SOLID defines one principle of software architecture. This SOLID principle is followed to avoid product strategy mistakes. A software architecture must adhere to SOLID principle to avoid any architectural or developmental failure.

S.O.L.I.D PRINCIPLE

• Single Responsibility – Each services should have a single objective.
• Open-Closed Principle – Software modules should be independent and expandable.
• Liskov Substitution Principle – Independent services should be able to communicate and substitute each other.
• Interface Segregation Principle – Software should be divided into such microservices there should not be any redundancies.
• Dependency Inversion Principle – Higher-levels modules should not be depending on low-lower-level modules and changes in higher level will not affect to lower level.

Importance of Software Architecture : Software architecture comes under design phase of software development life cycle. It is one of initial step of whole software development process. Without software architecture proceeding to software development is like building a house without designing architecture of house.

So software architecture is one of important part of software application development. In technical and developmental aspects point of view below are reasons software architecture are important.

• Selects quality attributes to be optimized for a system.
• Facilitates early prototyping.
• Allows to be built a system in component wise.
• Helps in managing the changes in System.

Besides all these software architecture is also important for many other factors like quality of software, reliability of software, maintainability of software, Supportability of software and performance of software and so on.

Advantages of Software Architecture :

• Provides a solid foundation for software project.
• Helps in providing increased performance.
• Reduces development cost.

Disadvantages of Software Architecture :

• Sometimes getting good tools and standardization becomes a problem for software architecture.
• Initial prediction of success of project based on architecture is not always possible.

From above it’s clear how much important a software architecture for the development of a software application. So a good software architecture is also responsible for delivering a good quality software product.

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Three-tier architecture is a well-established software application architecture that organizes applications into three logical and physical computing tiers: the presentation tier, or user interface; the application tier, where data is processed; and the data tier, where application data is stored and managed.

The chief benefit of three-tier architecture is that because each tier runs on its own infrastructure, each tier can be developed simultaneously by a separate development team. And can be updated or scaled as needed without impacting the other tiers.

For decades three-tier architecture was the prevailing architecture for client-server applications. Today, most three-tier applications are targets for modernization that uses cloud-native technologies such as containers and microservices and for migration to the cloud.

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Presentation tier

The presentation tier is the user interface and communication layer of the application, where the end user interacts with the application. Its main purpose is to display information to and collect information from the user. This top-level tier can run on a web browser, as desktop application, or a graphical user interface (GUI), for example. Web presentation tiers are developed by using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Desktop applications can be written in various languages depending on the platform.

Application tier

The application tier, also known as the logic tier or middle tier, is the heart of the application. In this tier, information that is collected in the presentation tier is processed - sometimes against other information in the data tier - using business logic, a specific set of business rules. The application tier can also add, delete, or modify data in the data tier. 

The application tier is typically developed by using Python, Java, Perl, PHP or Ruby, and communicates with the data tier by using  API  calls. 

The data tier, sometimes called database tier, data access tier or back-end, is where the information that is processed by the application is stored and managed. This can be a  relational database management system  such as  PostgreSQL , MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Db2, Informix or Microsoft SQL Server, or in a  NoSQL  Database server such as Cassandra,  CouchDB , or  MongoDB . 

In a three-tier application, all communication goes through the application tier. The presentation tier and the data tier cannot communicate directly with one another.

Tier versus layer

In discussions of three-tier architecture,  layer  is often used interchangeably – and mistakenly – for  tier , as in 'presentation layer' or 'business logic layer'. 

They aren't the same. A 'layer' refers to a functional division of the software, but a 'tier' refers to a functional division of the software that runs on infrastructure separate from the other divisions. The Contacts app on your phone, for example, is a  three - layer  application, but a  single-tier  application, because all three layers run on your phone.

The difference is important because layers can't offer the same benefits as tiers.

Again, the chief benefit of three-tier architecture is its logical and physical separation of functionality. Each tier can run on a separate operating system and server platform - for example, web server, application server, database server - that best fits its functional requirements. And each tier runs on at least one dedicated server hardware or virtual server, so the services of each tier can be customized and optimized without impacting the other tiers. 

Other benefits (compared to single- or two-tier architecture) include:

• Faster development : Because each tier can be developed simultaneously by different teams, an organization can bring the application to market faster. And programmers can use the latest and best languages and tools for each tier.
• Improved scalability : Any tier can be scaled independently of the others as needed.
• Improved reliability : An outage in one tier is less likely to impact the availability or performance of the other tiers.
• Improved security : Because the presentation tier and data tier can't communicate directly, a well-designed application tier can function as an internal firewall, preventing SQL injections and other malicious exploits.

In web development, the tiers have different names but perform similar functions:

• The web server  is the presentation tier and provides the user interface. This is usually a web page or website, such as an ecommerce site where the user adds products to the shopping cart, adds payment details or creates an account. The content can be static or dynamic, and is developed using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• The application server  corresponds to the middle tier, housing the business logic that is used to process user inputs. To continue the ecommerce example, this is the tier that queries the inventory database to return product availability, or adds details to a customer's profile. This layer often developed using Python, Ruby, or PHP and runs a framework such as Django, Rails, Symphony, or ASP.NET.
• The database server  is the data or backend tier of a web application. It runs on database management software, such as MySQL, Oracle, DB2, or PostgreSQL.

While three-tier architecture is easily the most widely adopted multitier application architecture, there are others that you might encounter in your work or your research.

Two-tier architecture 

Two-tier architecture is the original client-server architecture, consisting of a presentation tier and a data tier; the business logic lives in the presentation tier, the data tier or both. In two-tier architecture the presentation tier - and therefore the end user - has direct access to the data tier, and the business logic is often limited. A simple contact management application, where users can enter and retrieve contact data, is an example of a two-tier application. 

N-tier architecture

N-tier architecture - also called or multitier architecture - refers to  any  application architecture with more than one tier. But applications with more than three layers are rare because extra layers offer few benefits and can make the application slower, harder to manage and more expensive to run. As a result, n-tier architecture and multitier architecture are usually synonyms for three-tier architecture.

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The topics to watch in software architecture

Microservices, serverless, AI, ML, and Kubernetes are among the most notable topics in our analysis of proposals from the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference.

Proposals submitted for the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference serve as a valuable weather vane, providing direction for developers and architects from what some of the leading names in the field propose as sessions. These go-to experts and practitioners work on the front lines of technology, and they understand that business and software architecture need to operate in harmony to support overall organizational success.

Our recent analysis [1] of speaker proposals from the O’Reilly Software Architecture Conference turned up a number of interesting findings:

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• Microservices was the No. 1 term in the proposals. This topic remains a bedrock concept in the software architecture space.
• A big year-over-year jump in serverless, up 89 slots, suggests increased interest, exploration, and experimentation around this nascent and evolving topic for software architects.
• AI (No. 45) and Machine Learning (No. 20) ranked well individually in the most frequently referenced topics, but if you combine them they would rise to the No. 7 topic overall. The increase of AI/ML in proposals is likely tied to the need for more skills development in the software architecture space as well as AI/ML’s role in monitoring and reliability.
• Kubernetes rose 72 positions year-over-year, reflecting how important orchestration has become to software architects who increasingly plan distributed systems.
• Monitoring grew from an unranked term in 2018 to the No. 48 term in 2019. This signals that DevOps-related topics are becoming important for those working on software architecture.

The increased interest in the proposals for serverless, Kubernetes, and AI/ML shows what we see roiling the software architecture ecosystem—i.e., the effect of organizations migrating to the cloud and distributed microservices, the potential to instantiate microservices as serverless components, and the increasing importance of data for monitoring and automation.

The following table shows topics of interest from our analysis of proposals from the 2018 Software Architecture Conference in New York and our upcoming 2019 Software Architecture Conference in San Jose . We used a form of the Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF/IDF) technique to identify and rank the top terms.

We focused this list on important industry terms and terms showing notable year-over-year changes. We omitted stop-like words such as “software,” “system,” and “how” from the results. Unranked means a term had less than three instances in the corpus of proposals submitted for an event.

Microservices still matter

“Microservices,” the No. 1 term in proposals, may seem like it’s past its prime given how much has already been written and said about it, but microservices remains directional or at least aspirational to software architecture for many organizations. Consistent interest in this topic in the speaker proposals suggests organizations that have already committed to microservices are still pushing to get the most out of their investments. Note that adopting microservices doesn’t mean you’ve mastered it.

Microservices is also an essential part of the Next Architecture , the trend we’re tracking that sees organizations embracing the combination of cloud, containers, orchestration, and microservices to meet customer expectations for availability, features, and performance. We expect microservices to continue as a top concept in Software Architecture Conference proposals for the foreseeable future.

Serverless and service mesh are ascendant

Some view serverless as an unproven topic, and clearly we have a lot to learn about moving toward mainstream use of serverless architecture. However, the uptick in the term “serverless” in the proposals is hard to ignore (up 89 slots to the No. 7 position), suggesting increased exploration, investigation, and experimentation with serverless implementations. Serverless is a good fit for software architects, as it abstracts the messy implementation, hardware, and other elements of a design. With serverless filling a need for software architects, we expect it to continue as a notable proposal term.

The term “mesh,” used to describe the service mesh frameworks used to coordinate between microservices without using shared assets, made a big jump: from unranked in 2018 to its current rank of No. 35. For the conceptual work that software architects engage in, service mesh allows operational coupling while avoiding domain coupling and has become the dominant operational reuse pattern in the microservices world.

Embracing AI and machine learning

The ranks of “AI” (No. 45) and “machine learning” (No. 20) both increased individually, and combining the two topics would create the 7th-ranked term overall. We see AI/ML becoming more important to software architecture on two fronts: putting AI/ML into production requires new skills and, for most organizations, a steep learning curve; AI/ML can also be used to help address software architecture issues such as monitoring and reliability. Clearly the software architecture community has embraced the two related topics in a big way.

A need to understand Kubernetes

“Kubernetes,” the open source container orchestration tool, is another Next Architecture -related term that made a strong showing in our proposal results. In 2019, Kubernetes moved up 72 slots to the No. 34 position.

Software architects won’t become Kubernetes experts—implementation and management is typically handled by infrastructure teams—but with Kubernetes growing in importance in the enterprise, architects need to understand how this powerful and complicated tool can best be applied in their organizations.

Mature concepts make inroads

The term “domain,” most likely associated with the “domain-driven design” approach to software development, was up 563 positions to the No. 26 slot in the 2019 proposal data. “Testing” was up 85 positions year over year, taking the No. 29 slot. “Agile” increased 64 slots to No. 38. Why do we see these mature topics showing up in the proposals? The data suggests these established topics from the broader technology world have made inroads with software architects. Software architecture needs to reflect the entire business, so as these topics grow within organizations their relevance to software architects also grows.

Noteworthy trends in the second-tier proposal topics

Second-tier topics are often mentioned in the proposal data, but less frequently than the top-tier topics covered above. While these second-tier topics show more rank volatility over time, careful investigation can turn up topics worth paying attention to, either as poised to climb to the top tier, or topics that are losing their currency with the proposing cohort.

Unranked means a term had less than three instances in the corpus of proposals submitted for an event.

The term “monitoring” went from unranked in 2018 to the No. 48 term in 2019. This is a sign that DevOps-related topics have become more important for those working on software architecture. Combined with the increased ranks of the terms “testing” and “agile” in the top-tier topics, we see a trend of software architecture making a more pronounced embrace of DevOps-style deployment and production-ready designs, along with the continuing uptick in the engineering practices espoused by continuous delivery.

The rise of “open source” to a mid-tier rank of No. 80 shows that software architects, even while working at the conceptual phase of system design, are turning more regularly to open source tools and platforms.

The growth in the terms “monolith” (No. 99), used in the context of migrating to a microservices architecture or describing legacy architecture, and “migration” (No. 191), suggests that proposers are increasingly distinguishing between monolith and microservice applications.

The increase in “Istio” mentions (No. 150), a tool for implementing a service mesh to connect and monitor distributed microservices, reinforces the focus on microservices and empirical support for the rapidly increasing interest in service mesh for our cohort of session proposers.

Finally, the drop in position for the term “web” to a rarely mentioned rank of No. 482 shows a trend we notice in other areas . What we used to call “web” is now just computing, and there’s no need to call out the web anymore. It’s the water we swim in.

Concluding thoughts

The proposal analysis shows us the broad and growing swath of factors that must be considered by the software architecture practitioner. There are too many topics for any practitioner to know every facet of the software architecture ecosystem. To perform efficiently, software architects should avoid getting bogged down in too much technical detail. They need just enough technical knowledge and an expansive approach to keeping up with the changing nature of software architecture to grow with this dynamic field.

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Software Architecture in Practice Chapter 19: Open Issues and Course Summary

Nov 07, 2023

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This lecture discusses open issues in software architecture, including life-cycle cost models, integrating legacy systems, achieving quality attributes, prescriptive design techniques, architecture description languages, and product line practices.

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• quality attributes
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Presentation Transcript

Software Architecture in PracticeChapter 19: Open Issues and Course Summary

Lecture Objectives • This lecture will • enable students to identify open issues in software architecture • summarize the course

Topics • Open issues • life-cycle cost models • integrating legacy systems • achieving quality attributes • prescriptive design techniques • architecture description languages • product line practices • Course summary

Life-Cycle Cost Models • Architecture is an up-front development effort. • More work up front to design and evaluate • pays off in • reduced implementation effort • reuse opportunities • lower modification costs • Cost models need to be modified to reflect different life-cycle costs. • higher up-front costs • lower back-end costs

Integrating Legacy Systems • Need to repackage legacy systems for use in subsequent software development • Need to extract architectural elements from available sources • visualization problem: need tool to visualize simple patterns within a system architecture • awareness of different architectural structures

Achieving Quality Attributes • Performance: analytic model exists which allows repeatable prediction techniques • Modifiability: no analytic model exists, which • forces reliance on case-specific scenarios • Need a principled method for tradeoffs among quality attributes, including cost and schedule

Prescriptive Design Techniques • Need a method to produce from desired qualities a method that achieves them • Attribute tradeoff • understand interaction of different attributes • example: “jitter” (variance of arrival times) can affect performance, security, and reliability

Architecture Description Languages • The jury is still out on architecture description languages. • Architecture description languages give designers a choice of • structures to represent • notation to use • analyses and verifications that are possible • Infrastructure for ADLs • must integrate with other development tools • requires community effort

Product Line Practices • Architectures for a product line emphasize the quality of modifiability. • More work is required to • understand characteristics of product line production • devise technical solutions to technical problems • tendency for slow initial development • synchronization of product line architecture and product architectures • recommend organizational solutions for non-technical problems • organization structure • business case

Course Summary -1 • Architecture is a crucial design asset. • vehicle for stakeholder communication • key to achieving system qualities • basis for development project structure • Architecture is an important corporate asset. • can be reused from project to project • forms a basis for product lines • is a foundation for new market entry • Architecture is an important community asset. • standard models emerge for mature domains • is a basis for component markets

Course Summary -2 • Architecture-based development differs from conventional development. • Central authority is a must. • Architecture representation and communication become important. • Architecture evaluation provides an early opportunity for prediction and correction. • Components map to teams.

Course Summary -3 • Architecture is the key to achieving quality attributes. • A-7E: modifiability • air traffic control: availability • USAF flight simulators: scalability • CelsiusTech: reusability • METOC: short time to deployment • The Architecture Business Cycle shows how architectures and their environments affect each other.

Last Words • If a project has not achieved a system architecture, including its rationale, the project should not proceed to full-scale system development. Specifying the architecture as a deliverable enables its use throughout the development and maintenance process. • - Barry Boehm, 1995 • I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality. Having a system architect is the most important single step toward conceptual integrity... After teaching a software engineering laboratory more than 20 times, I came to insist that student teams as small as four people choose a manager, and a separatearchitect. • - Fred Brooks, 1995

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