This article provides a detailed example of the Software Architecture description and creation process.
What Are Architectural Katas?
Architectural Katas is a collaborative, hands-on event designed to help software architects and developers sharpen their architecture design skills in a fun and engaging way. The term “kata” is borrowed from martial arts, referring to a series of practice movements designed to build proficiency. In this context, Architectural Katas refers to a structured exercise where participants design software architectures for complex, real-world scenarios.
The main goal of an Architectural Kata is to simulate the challenges architects face when building systems. It encourages participants to think critically about design trade-offs, scalability, and maintainability while working within a set of constraints. It also provides an opportunity for participants to work in teams, share ideas, and get feedback from experienced mentors and peers.
Our Journey in O’Reilly Architectural Katas
September 2023 marked an exciting milestone for our team as we participated in the Architectural Katas competition. Our mission was to design the architecture for “Road Warrior”, an innovative online trip management dashboard. This platform aims to provide travelers with a comprehensive solution to seamlessly organize and manage their reservations. You can view the original requirements here.
The Challenge
We were given seven days to develop a detailed architectural description and submit our proposal. We utilized Viewpoints and Perspectives as our architectural framework and employed the C4 model for our diagramming needs to tackle this.
The Competition
In the initial round, our submission was among the top five selected by the judges. This achievement gave us the opportunity to advance to the next phase, where we had a few days to prepare a comprehensive presentation and record a five-minute video. These materials were essential to explain and advocate for our architectural design to the judging panel.
Victory
We are thrilled to share that our hard work and dedication paid off—we won the competition!
Explore Our Work
Feel free to explore our Architectural Description in detail. While achieving such a high level of detail in real-world projects can be challenging, this exercise was invaluable in demonstrating the effectiveness of combining Viewpoints and Perspectives with the C4 model.
All winners
For more examples of software architecture descriptions, visit The Architecture Kata Log