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THE SOFTWARE ARCHITECT CODE
Building the Digital World
LENGTH: 8 weeks
EFFORT: 2 - 3 hours per week
SUBJECT: Computer Science
LEVEL: Introductory
LANGUAGE: English
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTS: English
SYLLABUS

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INTRODUCTION
The Software Architect Code: Building the Digital World is an introductory course to
discover your software talents, so that you can empower your capabilities in any field you
are working on.
We all have some talents. We know some of them but others have not been revealed to us
yet. In this course, we will show you what kinds of talents are necessary for creating
software. We will explain how people from different professions will work together in
order to create innovative software and we will show the most important activities for
generating right software products and services.
Future will be digital and software will be everywhere providing a better world. Everyone
and every company will be related with software in some way. Nowadays, new talents are
required in order to build the digital word.
Some talents have emerged by something that has been activated. We hope this course will
trigger your unknown talents. Do you want to find out what software talents you have?
Come with us during these weeks to discover this and look closely at the possibilities that
software can bring to you. The amount of things you will be able to do is infinite.
If this is your first course on edX, do not hesitate to enroll in the Demo course to get to
know the courseware: https://www.edx.org/course/demox-edx-demox-1.
OBJECTIVES
The main objectives of this course are:
 Understand the talents of a Software Architect in the digital world.
 Understand the importance of capturing all essential user needs and wishes and
applying the Complexity Management method to plan and build software pieces.
 Understand the software design and testing activities addressing the new challenges
of the digital world.
 Understand new interaction paradigms and creativity and design methods that
move the focus from the software to the humans who use and enjoy the
technologies.
COURSE STAFF
 ANTONIO DE AMESCUA. Full Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Course coordinator, Design of Contents, Social Media Strategy, Quality Control,
Teacher, Leader of PART I.
 MARIBEL SÁNCHEZ-SEGURA. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid. Course coordinator, Design of Contents, Social Media Strategy, Quality
Control, Teacher.
 JUAN LLORENS. Full Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Design of
Contents, Teacher, Leader of PART II.
 PALOMA DÍAZ. Full Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Design of
Contents, Quality Control, Teacher, Leader of PART IV.

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 IGNACIO AEDO. Full Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Teacher,
Design of Contents, Quality Control.
 TERESA ONORATI. Postdoct Researcher at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Design of Contents, Quality Control, Teacher.
 ANDREA BELLUCCI. Assistant Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Design of Contents, Quality Control, Teacher.
 MANUEL VELASCO. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Design of Contents, Quality Control, Teacher, Leader of PART III.
 JAVIER GARCÍA-GUZMÁN. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid. Design of Contents, Quality Control, Teacher.
 FUENSANTA MEDINA-DOMÍNGUEZ. Visiting Professor at Universidad Carlos III
de Madrid. Design of Contents, Quality Control.
 GONZALO GÉNOVA. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Design of Contents, Quality Control, Teacher.
 ANABEL FRAGA. Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Design of
Contents, Quality Control, Teacher.
 JOSÉ MARÍA ÁLVAREZ-RODRÍGUEZ. Visiting Professor at Universidad Carlos III
de Madrid. Technical coordinator, Design of Contents, Social Media Strategy,
Quality Control, Teacher.
 JUAN MIGUEL GÓMEZ BERBÍS. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de
Madrid. Design of Contents, Social Media Strategy, Quality Control, Teacher.
 FRANCISCO JAVIER CALLE GÓMEZ. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III
de Madrid. Design of Contents, Quality Control.
 DOLORES CUADRA. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Design of Contents, Quality Control.
 ELENA CASTRO GALÁN. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Design of Contents, Quality Control.
 ROMÁN LÓPEZ CORTIJO. Associate Professor at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Design of Contents, Quality Control
COURSE STRUCTURE
The duration of the course is eight weeks, structured in four parts:
PART I: Decoding the talents of an architect of the digital world
Go to the Renaissance to discover the Da Vinci talents and come back to the future
to unveil the talents required for building a digital world.
Week 1: The Da Vinci Code
Understand the Da Vinci talents. We will show that software architects are
adventurers, where imagination, optimism, courage, determinism, flexibility, the
ability to predict, foresight, perseverance, continuous learning, and a desire to excel
are essential ingredients.
Week 2: The Digital World Code
This week, we will travel to the future to decode the talents for working in high-
creative teams and the best digital organizations in the world.
We want you to understand the key elements to manage engagement, cooperation,
innovation and success in a smart world lead by software.

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PART 2: Envisioning needs and wishes
The art of understanding different prospects to classify and prioritize needs and
wishes.
Week 3: Identifying needs
A holistic view of the mission and vision of a system to fulfill all essential needs and
to think ahead.
Week 4: Do not reinvent the Wheel, no need!
In this week, software will be presented as an intangible asset that can be designed
to be shared and reused.
PART 3: Discovering how to build and test an idea
Drawing sketches and polishing their design. Looking for perfection
Week 5: Portray a Creator in the Age of Software
We will learn the process of Software Designing, with the creator as main role in
the process, focusing on quality values.
Week 6: Looking for perfection
In this week, we show how the testing process is around the whole software
architect work.
PART 4: Shifting the focus from software-centric to human-centric development
Get to know the main concepts and principles of human computer interaction,
creativity and participatory methods that a modern software engineer should be
familiar with.
Week 7: From software-centric to human-centric
In this week we will shift the focus from the software itself to the person who uses
it and thus we will introduce the main concepts about human computer interaction
that a software architect should be familiar with.
Week 8: Creativity and participatory design
We will introduce the need to combine creativity and participatory methods with
software engineering practices to be able to think out of the box and imagine new
applications.
COURSE METHODOLOGY
Contents will be based on a wide range of short videos, each one will describe specific
concepts in a comprehensive and entertaining way.
Every week follows the same methodology and structure. At the beginning of each week
you will find an outline giving you an overview of the week. Every week has several
lectures. Each lecture includes one video, some questions and an infographics.
In order to understand better the content of the video-lecture we will be providing some
context. The video will be used to explain the lecture concepts. The objective of the
questions (non graded activities) is to provide feedback to the learners about their
understanding on the lecture. The infographics contains the concepts of the lecture in a

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visual-text way. You can download and read it either before watching the video or after
watching it at your convenience.
If you want to be evaluated in this course in order to get a certificate you have to do the
test (graded activity) provided at the end of each week.
COMMUNICATION WITH LEARNERS
EMAILING and the COURSE INFO PAGE will be used by the teachers to keep learners up-
to-date with all the news related to the course. In addition, learners are encouraged to
actively interact with other learners and teachers through the course FORUM on edX and
share their concerns, problems, and experiences.
We also use TWITTER @swarchitectedx and the hashtag #swarchitectedx.
EVALUATION
Theoretical concepts will be evaluated through weekly TESTS. These tests are the
single evaluation criterion. It is required to get an average of 70% at the end of the
course to PASS THE COURSE.
It is possible to pass the course just doing the weekly tests, but it will be a much
more enriching experience if you also do the formative activities following the
videos.
CALENDAR
The course The Software Architect Code: Building the Digital World starts on
February 16 and is 8 weeks long; the time of the course is always UTC (Coordinated
Universal Time). The weekly content will be posted on the courseware, together with the
activities and additional material, on Tuesdays.
Evaluation tests will be available until April 19 (23:59 UTC). Certificates will be issued
after this date.
WEEK RELEASE DATES CONTENTS
1 16 February
Week 1: The Da Vinci Code
Test (graded).
2 23 February
Week 2: The Digital World Code
Test (graded).
3 1 March
Week 3: Identifying needs
Test (graded).
4 8 March
Week 4: Do not reinvent the Wheel, no need!
Test (graded).

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5 15 March
Week 5: Portray a Creator in the Age of Software
Test (graded).
6 22 March
Week 6: Looking for perfection
Test (graded).
7 29 March
Week 7: From software-centric to human-centric
Test (graded).
8 5 April
Week 8: Creativity and participatory design
Test (graded).