SoftServe Contributes to Carnegie Mellon’s Flagship Course on Software Architecture Design and Analysis
SoftServe is proud to announce that SmartDecisions, a game that simulates the software architecture design process, created in partnership with Rick Kazman, a professor at the University of Hawaii and a research scientist at the Software Engineering Institute, and Humberto Cervantes, a professor from Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City, is now a component of the flagship Software Architecture Design and Analysis course at the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. The course is taught to experienced technical professionals and, occasionally, software development teams at large corporations.
The game is based on SEI’s Attribute-Driven Design (ADD) method, the latest version of which was developed by Cervantes and Kazman. ADD is a systematic method that simplifies and accelerates the design process for complex software systems. Game play currently explores software architecture concepts using a Big Data analytics application, but the creators plan to develop new versions using more technology domains, like IoT.
“Rick and I worked on the game’s mechanics while the SoftServe team worked on building questions and challenges for game play. They chose to focus on Big Data, and students have told us the case study makes the game feel realistic,” says Cervantes. “In the real world, software architecture design takes a considerable amount of time. We wanted to simulate this process quickly while grounding academic theory in a real-world application.”
SoftServe’s Technology Service Group has been cooperating with Cervantes and Kazman since 2014, for creating high quality architectures aligned with an organization's business goals.
“Designing architecture for complex Big Data Analytics systems can be a long and challenging process, but our game simulates agile architecture design through a series of interactions, and helps players not only quickly learn the basic principles and accelerate the design process, but generate new ideas when designing real-life solutions,” explains Serge Haziyev SoftServe’s VP Technology Services Group. “Nurturing a culture of excellence is very important to us, and we’re happy to share our innovative gamification approach to designing Big Data Analytics systems with SEI’s educational community.”
More information about the SmartDecisions game and designing Big Data Systems can be gained from this on-demand webinar or blog. The SmartDecisions game is free and open source, and can be downloaded at smartdecisionsgame.com.