One company can develop printers more quickly and with more innovative features using a fraction of the staff of its competition. They do this with an architected, reuse-based approach. For every such success story, there is one of failure: the project is under-resourced or cancelled; it is stalled with infighting or lack of leadership; the architecture is resisted by developers, etc. We have turned what we have learned from these successes and failures into a set of Software Architecture Action Guides.

In this tutorial, we present our Action Guide approach to software architecting. Action Guides are short (fit on an index card) and designed to solve a specific problem (e.g., develop an architectural vision, capture non-functional requirements, document interfaces). Taken together, they provide a comprehensive architecting process that uses UML as the modeling language. Used selectively, teams can tailor their own lightweight architecting method. Used individually, they produce some key result for the architecting team.

Introduction (5 minutes)

• Madison metaphor

Architecting Process (40 minutes)

• Model for thinking about software architecture
• Graphically facilitated class discussion of architecting pitfalls and critical success factors
• Overview of the Architecting Process, motivated by the pitfalls and CSF discussion
• Introduction to Software Architecture Action Guides

Group exercise (45 minutes)

• Graphically facilitated large-group creation of an architecture communication plan using our Communication Plan Action Guide

Session II

Meta-architecture Action Guides (30 minutes)

• Requirements Action Guides: Context map, Stakeholder Profile and Scope Action Guides
• Meta-architecture Action Guides: Principles and Patterns
• Small-group exercise using the Architecture Principles Action Guide

Conceptual Architecture Action Guides (30 minutes)

• Requirements Action Guides: Use Cases and System Qualities Action Guides
• Conceptual Architecture Action Guides: Architecture Diagram and CRC-R Action Guides
• Validation Action Guides: Impact Assessment Action Guide
• Small-group exercise using use cases and qualities, an architecture diagram and the Imapct Assessment Action Guide

Logical Architecture Action Guides (25 minutes)

• Graphically facilitated class discussion on how to document a component
• Logical Architecture Action Guides: Component Collaboration, Interface Specification and Component Documentation Action Guides

Wrap-up (5 minutes)

We use: