This is the second course in a two-course, senior-level capstone project experience. Students submit one or more additional increments that build upon the solution submitted at the end of the first course. Students make major presentations for both customers as well as technical-oriented audiences, turn over a complete portfolio of project-related artifacts and offer an evaluation of the project and team experience.

A system’s software architecture is the first technical artifact that illustrates a proposed solution to a stated problem. For all but the simplest system, the achievement of qualities such as flexibility, modifiability, security, and reliability is critically dependent on the components and interactions defined by the architecture. The course focuses on the definition of architectural structures, the analysis of architectures in terms of trade-offs among conflicting constraints, the documentation of architecture for use over a product’s life cycle, and the role of architecture during coding activities.