Creating good software starts with a solid understanding of the requirements that will have an influence on the software. In this module, we will discuss both functional and non-functional requirements, such as quality attributes, business requirements and constraints.

Up till now, we have been talking about quality in an informal way. However, if you want to build systems that support the required qualities you will need a way to express those quality attributes and understand how you can achieve them. After this module you should be able to formulate your own quality requirements. We will also study 2 qualities that are especially relevant for Internet of Things: interoperability and modifiability.

In the fourth week, we will explain how architectural tactics can help you create a software architecture that achieves the predefined requirements. This is what needs to be done in step three of the ADD - remember? We'll start of by learning about the difference between tactics and patterns. We will give some examples of tactics to achieve interoperability and modifiability. We will discuss the MVC pattern and its relation to the modifiability tactics. Lastly, we'll discuss how MVC is being used in Android.

In this last week, we will explain how architectural patterns can help you create a software architecture that achieves the predefined requirements. Patterns are closely related to tactics, as we saw last week. First, we'll look at different types of patterns. Then, we'll learn how to combine tactics and patterns. We'll conclude this last week with a case study: DYAMAND's requirements and their architecture.