This course is taught by Dr. Mark Maier, the co-author of the textbook, The Art of Systems Architecting, now in the 4th edition.

Prerequisites

Graduate standing or a probability or statistics course, e.g. ME EN 2550, CS3130, ECE3530, MATH 3070, BME 3070, MET E 3070, OSC 2030 or equivalent.

Preq or concurrent at least one of SIME 6400/5400, SIME 5410/6410 or SIME 5430/6430.

Textbook

The Art of Systems Architecting, fourth edition, CRC Press by Mark Maier and Eberhardt Rechtin

Student Learning Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

  • Identify where architectural decisions occur in typical program scenarios, including Government sponsored contracted developments, incremental commercial developments, major product cycles, and entrepreneurial product developments
  • Distinguish architectural and non-architectural design decisions
  • Describe the elements of an architecture description document, and distinguish descriptive from decision elements
  • Define model-based approaches to constructing architectural views
  • Identify and apply domain-specific heuristics in areas such as builder-architected, collaborative, opposed, and software-centric systems
  • Demonstrate the application of heuristic and analytical methods to key architectural phases
    1. Purpose analysis, including user-facing versus builder facing requirements
    2. Problem structuring, including objective trees and functional versus non-functional objectives
    3. Solution structuring, including brainstorming techniques and layered models
    4. Consistency and completeness analysis, at stakeholder and model levels
    5. Concept selection methods
  • Demonstrate application within a domain of realistic scale and complexity

Course Description

Systems Architecting is how we set the purpose of a system, create its conceptual structure, select the development approach, and validate it for use.  System Architecting works through stakeholder interaction and conceptual design to determine and trade the primary sources of value, cost, and risk. The course presents best practices for systems architecting through case studies of major system developments (successful or otherwise) and a set of methods to make and describe architecture decisions. Students will learn key architecture heuristics, adapt core systems engineering tools for architecture decision making, and apply both informal and formal description notations.

Past Syllabus

Sample Lectures

Below are two lectures, from different points in the course, that highlight some of the issues covered in the course and the style of the techniques taught. The first lecture is on the “Three Column” model of architecting versus engineering and the middle ground between. The second lecture is part of a series of units on the application of decision analysis methods to architecting, with this unit focusing on alternative strategies for making architecture decisions under uncertainty.

Three column link

Strategy under uncertainty link