I published the last posting several weeks ago. But, of course, I have a good excuse: In the meantime, I gave a seminar on Software Architecture and participated in several Siemens-internal events. But now the time has come to continue with my architecture blog.
This time I'd like to address one specific issue. How can we effectively teach other persons everything they need to know about designing a high quality software architecture? For the sake of brevity, I won't cover what a software architect should know in this posting. In the seminars Frank (Buschmann) and I give, we mostly offer a mixture of Powerpoint presentations, discussions, and group exercises. In the presentation sections we also address things we've learned in projects. In the group exercise 3-5 attendees are then asked to design a small example application such as a Web Store or Chat Server. This setting works very nicely, but is far from being sufficient. Thus, another and additional approach is to teach and consult small project teams in real-world projects. In this scenario we start with a series of seminars and then participate in real-world projects as architecture consultants. However, this isn't sufficient too as we also need a kind of certification for software architects. Of course, small companies might not afford to spend all that time and budget for educating their staff in architecture concerns. But that is another topic.
I'd like to know what you think. I'd also like to know about your experiences. What did work for you and what didn't? How did you become a software architect? I am looking forward to all comments.
1 comment:
I really think an architect should know about developing, to get the ground for think more abstract. He needs to think as a developer, to project how the architecture he is designing will be implemented and how it will behave at run-time
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