Description
Design Debate Research Paper
Purpose: Your goal for this assignment is to review and provide your own original perspectives on
the document selected below. This is an opportunity to increase your familiarity with the various
software architecture and design concepts that we’ve been discussing throughout the course, and
apply them while reviewing a topical debate in the field.
Article to Review
97 Things Every Software Architect Should Know, Richard Monson-Haefel, Feb 2009, (ISBN:
9780596800611) O’Reilly Media, Inc.
You can access the text via GT Library’s Safari Books Online:
https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/97-things-every/9780596800611/
Writing Style Guidelines: The style guidelines can be found on the course Udacity site, and at:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.udacity-data.com/courses/gt-cs6310/assignments/writing.html
Research Paper Requirements
• Review/scan the book and select three articles from the book as your focus points. For each
focus point, you must provide strong and convincing justification why you feel the point is
either (1) fundamentally true, (2) fundamentally false, or (3) true or false depending on certain
key and distinct criteria, conditions, circumstances, etc.
• You must clearly list which three articles (including page numbers) you’ve selected.
• If you feel the article is fundamentally true, then you can provide examples from your
experiences that support its correctness. You must provide enough detail to match your
experiences to the key aspects of the article, to better highlight how your experiences
inductively support its correctness. You can also use more general principles and logicallybased reasoning to explain why the article is true using reasonably well-known principles of
software architecture & design. You are welcome (and encouraged) to use the concepts and
terminology that you have been learning during the course from various sources – the SWEBOK,
the various readings, Udacity videos, etc. – to support your arguments.
• Similarly, if you feel that the article is fundamentally false, then you can provide counterexamples based (partly) on your experiences, and (even better) on reasonably well-known
software architecture and design principles. Similar to the approach above, you must provide
enough detail to match your experiences to the key aspects of the article in order to support
your conclusion. Make it clear that any counter-examples you’ve cited are truly applicable to
the claims made in the article.
• Finally, if you feel strongly that the article is true in some cases, but false in others, then you
must cite clear criteria, circumstances, conditions, aspects, of the problem, etc. that
demonstrate what causes the true/false differences. You cannot simply use this option as an
“out” to avoid deeper reasoning, or selecting the “fundamentally true or false” options.
Evaluation
• You are also encouraged to research the concepts referenced in the article from other sources.
You are welcome to cite other sources in supporting your arguments, but remember this key
point: your submission will be evaluated based on your original thoughts and contributions:
effectively, the “glue” between the quotes and citations that you include from other sources.
• If you do include material from other sources, make sure that all such material is very clearly
marked and distinct from your contributions. And don’t include so many quotations from other
sources that you don’t leave enough room in the paper for your “glue”: your arguments and
explanations that connect the material from the various sources into a single, flowing thesis.
• In all cases, your goal is to provide a clear, concise, well-formed and persuasive arguments for
each focus point that you’ve selected.
• For clarity, you should make sure that your grammar, spelling, etc. is correct, and that your writing
flows as smoothly as possible. Also, text, images and diagrams must be clean and legible.
• For conciseness, the arguments for each of your focus points should be approximately 750-1000
words or less (~2 pages single spaced). This “size per focus point” limit is not strict: feel free to
use more space for one point (set of arguments) as long as you are willing to use less space for
another. The overall page limit, however, is strict.
• The well-formed aspects of your argument will be evaluated based on its logical structure: solid
supporting data combined with well-defined logical inferences, leading to a solid conclusion. A
well-formed argument must avoid common logical fallacies.
Quick Reminder on Collaborating with Others: Please use Piazza for your questions and/or
comments, and post publicly whenever it is appropriate. If your questions or comments contain
information that specifically provides an answer for some part of the assignment, then please make
your post private first, and we (the OMSCS 6310 Team) will review it and decide if it is suitable to be
shared with the larger class. B
