Software Architecture for Developers: From Requirements to Deployment

Course Overview

This comprehensive 3-day course teaches modern software architecture from requirements analysis to production deployment. Learn requirements engineering, Domain-Driven Design, microservices architecture, and DevOps practices with Kubernetes and GitOps. A hands-on course for developers who want to understand and implement architectural decisions.

What You Will Learn

Day 1: Requirements Engineering and Architecture Design

Introduction to Requirements Engineering
- Persona development: Defining user profiles and needs
- Creating scenarios: Use-case scenarios and scenario-based requirements
- User stories and tasks: SMART criteria, acceptance criteria
Creating the Context Model
- System context: Context diagram, system boundaries, external systems
- System boundaries: Identifying interfaces and integrations
Domain-Driven Design (DDD)
- Bounded Contexts: Separating domain models and data
- Aggregates, Entities, Value Objects: Modeling business objects
- Ubiquitous Language: Shared language between domain experts and developers
Microservices Architecture
- Microservices: Building independent and scalable services
- Data management: Database sharding, eventual consistency
- Service communication: REST (JSON), gRPC (Protobuf), API Gateways (e.g., Kong, NGINX)
Resilience in Architecture
- Resilience patterns: Circuit Breaker, Bulkhead, Retry
- Error handling: Graceful degradation, fallback strategies
API Design and Inter-Service Communication
- API Gateways: Kong, Zuul, Spring Cloud Gateway for service orchestration
- REST vs. gRPC: Protocol selection, HTTP/2, JSON vs. Protobuf
- Security best practices: OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect, JWT, API keys

Day 2: Deployment and DevOps

Deployment with Docker and Best Practices
- Containerization: Docker containers, Dockerfiles, images, Docker Compose
- Standardized deployment units: Deployment and versioning with Docker Hub
Infrastructure Automation and Best Practices
- IaC tools: Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Ansible
- Cloud infrastructure provisioning: Resource provisioning, state management
Deployment Automation
- Continuous Integration: Jenkins, GitLab CI, CircleCI for automated builds
- Continuous Deployment: Automated testing (unit, integration, E2E), canary releases
- Continuous Delivery
GitOps
- GitOps tools: ArgoCD, FluxCD
- GitOps principles: Infrastructure-as-code with Git as the source of truth

Day 3: Kubernetes and Production-Ready Architecture

Execution Platform: Kubernetes
- Kubernetes basics: Pods, Deployments, Services, Namespaces, ConfigMaps, Secrets
- Cluster management: Helm (package manager), Kubernetes Operators
- Scaling: Horizontal Pod Autoscaling, Cluster Autoscaler
- Resilience and high availability
Service Discovery and Load Balancing
- Service discovery: Kubernetes DNS, Istio
- Load balancing: Round Robin, Least Connections, HAProxy, NGINX, Istio (Service Mesh)
Security in Microservices Architectures
- Zero Trust: Mutual TLS, Istio for mTLS, service mesh security
- Network isolation
- Secrets management: Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Kubernetes Secrets
- API security: OAuth 2.0, JWT, rate limiting, IP whitelisting
Scalability and Performance
- Horizontal scaling: Auto-scaling, Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler
- Vertical scaling: Resource limits (CPU, memory), Vertical Pod Autoscaler
- Performance optimization: Design and execute a benchmark scenario

Prerequisites

Solid programming skills in at least one language
Basic understanding of web technologies and APIs
Initial experience with Docker advantageous
Basic knowledge of Linux/command line
Understanding of Git and version control

Course Format

Duration: 3 full days (8 hours each)
Format: Instructor-led training with extensive hands-on labs
Class Size: Maximum 12 participants for intensive support
Materials: Comprehensive course materials, code examples, and deployment templates included

Hands-on Labs and Exercises

During the course, you will work on practical projects:

Requirements Workshop: Creating personas and user stories
Context Model: Defining system boundaries and external integrations
DDD Modeling: Designing bounded contexts and aggregates
Microservice Implementation: Developing REST and gRPC services
Resilience Patterns: Implementing Circuit Breaker and retry logic
Docker Containerization: Multi-stage builds and Docker Compose
Kubernetes Deployment: Deploying a microservices application
GitOps Setup: Configuring ArgoCD for automated deployments
Service Mesh: Istio for mTLS and traffic management
Monitoring and Scaling: Configuring Horizontal Pod Autoscaler

Tools and Technologies Used

In the course, we work with:

Docker and Docker Compose
Kubernetes (locally with Minikube or Kind)
Helm for package management
ArgoCD or FluxCD for GitOps
Terraform for Infrastructure as Code
Istio Service Mesh
Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring
Kong or NGINX as API Gateway
Git and GitLab/GitHub

Who Should Attend

Backend developers who want to understand architecture
Software architects (Junior to Mid-Level)
DevOps engineers
Full-stack developers
Technical leads and team leads
Developers transitioning to cloud-native
Anyone who wants to understand and build modern microservices architectures

Learning Objectives

At the end of this course, you will be able to:

✅ Professionally gather and document requirements
✅ Define system contexts and boundaries
✅ Apply Domain-Driven Design concepts
✅ Design microservices architectures
✅ Implement resilience patterns
✅ Design secure APIs (OAuth, JWT)
✅ Containerize applications with Docker
✅ Write Infrastructure as Code with Terraform
✅ Build CI/CD pipelines
✅ Implement GitOps workflows
✅ Orchestrate Kubernetes deployments
✅ Use service meshes for security and observability
✅ Perform auto-scaling and performance optimization

Course Materials

All participants receive:

Comprehensive Software Architecture Material
Access to lab environment and code repository (14 days)
Digital certificate of completion
Labd and further course material
30 days post-course email support