Practice Module for Architecting Scalable Systems

Objectives

The objective of this practice module is twofold:

• Firstly, to expose participants to real world problems where the skills learned during the individual course modules can be applied to arrive at a feasible solution. This will be done in a supervised manner, so that the students will be able to tap on expert advice and guidance when needed.
• Secondly, to enable participants to demonstrate their proficiency across all of the skills that they have learned in the course modules and hence obtain a grade at the graduate certificate level.

Intended Audience

This practice module is targeted at participants who wish to complete the certification process for the graduate certificate in Architecting Scalable Systems. They should generally have:

• 3-4 years of software design and development experience and/or equivalent knowledge
• Knowledge on basics of architecting software

Prerequisites

Participants must have successfully completed (or in the progress of completing or have been exempted from) all the three course modules of the graduate certificate in Architecting Scalable Systems.

Components

There are two parts to the practice Module.

1. Practice Project Participants will need to undertake one or more projects to gain practical experience and demonstrate their understanding and mastery of the skills taught in the four component courses. The practice project will require each participant to expend an estimated 10 man-days of effort. These days are not expected to be contiguous and may stretch over many weeks. These projects may be conducted by individual participants or in teams depending on the nature of the project requirements.
2. Examination Each participant is required to sit for an examination on a stipulated date and time.

The overall grade for the participant will be based on the practice project and examination.

Typical Examples of Projects to be Undertaken

1. Problem description A new e-scooter sharing company aspires to develop a platform to support their scooter-sharing business. The company plans to expand its business to multiple countries and expand the use of the platform to other type of services. Deliverables and success criteria - Liaise with stakeholders to understand all the business requirements - Create a solution architecture to meet the business requirement, in this case to build a scalable, extensible and maintainable scooter-sharing platform utilizing cloud computing technology, DevOps and platform engineering. The architecture should have enough details on how the quality attributes will be achieved. - Plan for proof-of-concept by identifying components and use cases to be built to demonstrate the feasibility of the architecture. - Get the plan and architecture accepted by the stakeholders. - Build a proof-of-concept implementing the architecturally significant use cases demonstrating that the expected scalability, extensibility and maintainability can be achieved in the implementation.
2. Problem description A healthcare provider company is revamping its legacy system of centralized clinic and hospital management systems that is currently running on their mainframe to a distributed cloud native application to allow business agility and extensibility for overseas and regional expansion. They would like to design an extensible platform so that their current initial investment can be reused and leveraged when more healthcare services are added in the future. Deliverables and success criteria - Liaise with stakeholders to understand all the business requirements - Create a solution architecture to meet the business requirement, in this case to build a scalable, extensible and maintainable scooter-sharing platform utilizing cloud computing technology, DevOps and platform engineering. The architecture should have enough details on how the quality attributes will be achieved. - Plan for proof-of-concept by identifying components and use cases to be built to demonstrate the feasibility of the architecture. - Get the plan and architecture accepted by the stakeholders. - Build a proof-of-concept implementing the architecturally significant use cases demonstrating that the expected scalability, extensibility and maintainability can be achieved in the implementation.

Application (For Stackable Students)

• Participants are only allowed to take the practice module after completing all courses in the Grad Cert.
• Participants who wish to take the practice module concurrently in the same semester with the courses in the same Grad Cert must write to ask-iss@nus.edu.sg citing reasons by the application deadline. Email requests received after the deadline will not be considered. Requests will be reviewed after the deadline and approved on a case-by-case basis.
• Participants who miss the application window will have to apply for the practice module in the next semester.
• Participants who do not attend the briefing will be withdrawn from the practice module.