Patterns and traceability in teaching software architecture

Abstract

Courses on software architecture and software engineering need to explain the role of non-functional properties in software design, and they often use student projects to highlight their interrelations. Despite its critical importance in software development, the property of traceability has so far been mostly neglected. This paper examines the role of traceability for teaching software architecture and describes the objectives and structure of two consecutive courses given by the author at the University of Tübingen. The courses build on architectural patterns as blueprints for achieving particular non-functional properties. The vehicle for improving traceability is a sequence of small-scale projects, each of which includes the phases of requirements analysis, design, and implementation. This iterative approach allows students to learn from their experiences and to integrate the feedback on their solutions into the next project.