Software Engineering Institute

March 8, 2012—More than 630 people from 68 countries joined the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) three-hour, live virtual event entitled Architecting Software the SEI Way: Essential Steps Toward Mastery on February 28, 2012. The three, hour-long webinars from the event are now available for on-demand viewing at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/go/architecting-software-the-sei-way/.

For nearly two decades, the SEI has been instrumental in the creation and development of the field of software engineering known as software architecture. The software architecture of a program or computing system is a depiction of the system that fosters understanding of how the system will behave.

In the three webinars, SEI researchers Rob Wojcik, Felix Bachmann, and John Klein share insights from their work, including

• what software architecture is and why it is important
• why architecture evaluation methods can continuously ensure the creation of successful systems
• how a system-of-systems perspective improves the analysis of enterprise architectures

In the first webinar on software architecture fundamentals, Wojcik points out that “We say that an architecture is not just descriptive . . . [it] is also prescriptive. It defines constraints on the way people can implement the architecture in a system. . . . The wrong choice of architectural structure will prevent us from achieving certain qualities” such as security, performance, and availability.

In his webinar on improved architecture practice, Bachmann examines an architecture-centric engineering approach to system development. In this approach, an organization’s business or mission goals drive the design of an architecture, and the system is built from that architecture in a way that satisfies qualities important to achieving those goals.

The purpose of an architecture evaluation, Bachmann says, is to answer this question: “Will the designed system solution have the properties to make the organization successful?”

Discussing enterprise architecture, Klein notes in his webinar that the SEI takes a system-of-systems view of enterprise architecture. “Taking that perspective is useful for us for analysis and evaluation.”

To watch the webinar recordings, download the webinar slides, and get more information about software architecture, please visit http://www.sei.cmu.edu/go/architecting-software-the-sei-way/.