Skip to main content
Technical Competence in Application Development

Technical Competence in Application Development

$251.00
When you get access:
Course access is prepared after purchase and delivered via email
Your guarantee:
30-day money-back guarantee — no questions asked
Who trusts this:
Trusted by professionals in 160+ countries
Toolkit Included:
Includes a practical, ready-to-use toolkit containing implementation templates, worksheets, checklists, and decision-support materials used to accelerate real-world application and reduce setup time.
How you learn:
Self-paced • Lifetime updates
Adding to cart… The item has been added

What does the Technical Competence in Application Development course cover?

Technical Competence in Application Development is covered here in 8 modules: Architecture Design and System Modularity, Development Practices and Code Quality, Data Management and Persistence Strategy and 5 more. The outline lists 48 specific topics, opening with selecting between monolithic and microservices architectures based on team size, deployment frequency, and domain complexity.

How do you approach Technical Competence in Application Development step by step?

The work is sequenced in 8 stages. It starts with Architecture Design and System Modularity, moves through Development Practices and Code Quality and Data Management and Persistence Strategy, and ends at Dependency and Third-Party Service Management. Each stage carries its own topic list, so the sequence is followed rather than summarised.

What is in Module 1 of the Technical Competence in Application Development course?

Module 1 is Architecture Design and System Modularity. It works through selecting between monolithic and microservices architectures based on team size, deployment frequency, and domain complexity., defining bounded contexts in domain-driven design to align service boundaries with business capabilities., implementing API gateways to manage routing, authentication, and rate limiting across distributed services. and 3 more.

How is the Technical Competence in Application Development course delivered?

The Technical Competence in Application Development course is fully self-paced with immediate online access after enrolment. Access does not expire and future updates are included at no cost. It can be taken on any device, and a certificate of completion is issued by The Art of Service when you finish.

How much does the Technical Competence in Application Development course cost?

The Technical Competence in Application Development course is $250 as a one time payment. There is no subscription, no per seat licence and no hidden fee. Enrolment carries a 30 day satisfied or refunded guarantee, so it can be assessed in full before you commit.

Closely related courses: Technical Competence Toolkit, Technical Competence and First 90 Days Evaluation Kit.

More answers: what you get with every course, refund policy, all help answers.

This curriculum spans the technical decision-making and implementation practices found in multi-workshop architecture advisory programs and internal engineering capability builds across distributed systems, data governance, security integration, and operational resilience.

Module 1: Architecture Design and System Modularity

  • Selecting between monolithic and microservices architectures based on team size, deployment frequency, and domain complexity.
  • Defining bounded contexts in domain-driven design to align service boundaries with business capabilities.
  • Implementing API gateways to manage routing, authentication, and rate limiting across distributed services.
  • Choosing synchronous (REST, gRPC) versus asynchronous (message queues) communication patterns for inter-service interaction.
  • Evaluating the trade-offs of shared libraries versus duplicated code across services for common functionality.
  • Enforcing architectural consistency using architecture decision records (ADRs) and automated conformance checks in CI pipelines.

Module 2: Development Practices and Code Quality

  • Configuring static analysis tools (e.g., SonarQube, ESLint) with organization-specific rules and severity thresholds.
  • Implementing peer review standards, including mandatory checklist items and minimum reviewer counts per pull request.
  • Integrating automated code formatting (e.g., Prettier, Black) into pre-commit hooks to eliminate style debates.
  • Managing technical debt through quantified tracking and inclusion in sprint planning cycles.
  • Establishing branch strategies (e.g., trunk-based development vs. GitFlow) based on release cadence and team coordination needs.
  • Enforcing test coverage thresholds as part of merge-blocking CI gates without incentivizing low-value test inflation.

Module 3: Data Management and Persistence Strategy

  • Selecting relational, document, or columnar databases based on query patterns, consistency requirements, and scalability needs.
  • Designing schema evolution strategies for backward and forward compatibility in production systems.
  • Implementing connection pooling and query optimization to prevent database bottlenecks under load.
  • Managing data retention and archival policies in compliance with regulatory requirements and storage costs.
  • Choosing between application-level and database-level encryption for sensitive fields.
  • Coordinating distributed transactions using sagas when two-phase commit is not feasible across services.

Module 4: Security and Compliance Integration

  • Integrating secret management (e.g., HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager) into deployment workflows.
  • Enforcing role-based access control (RBAC) at both API and data layers with least-privilege principles.
  • Conducting threat modeling during design phases using STRIDE or similar frameworks for high-risk features.
  • Embedding security scanning tools (SAST, DAST) into CI/CD pipelines with defined response protocols for findings.
  • Documenting data flows and processing activities to support GDPR, CCPA, or HIPAA compliance audits.
  • Managing third-party library risks through SBOM generation and vulnerability monitoring with automated alerts.

Module 5: CI/CD and Deployment Automation

  • Designing immutable deployment artifacts to ensure environment parity and reproducible builds.
  • Implementing blue-green or canary deployments with health checks and automated rollback triggers.
  • Managing infrastructure as code (IaC) using Terraform or CloudFormation with state locking and peer review.
  • Orchestrating multi-environment promotion with manual approval gates for production releases.
  • Versioning APIs and managing backward compatibility during concurrent deployment windows.
  • Isolating staging environments with production-like data while masking personally identifiable information (PII).

Module 6: Observability and Runtime Governance

  • Instrumenting applications with structured logging, metrics, and distributed tracing using OpenTelemetry.
  • Defining service-level objectives (SLOs) and error budgets to guide incident response and feature pacing.
  • Configuring alerting rules to minimize noise while ensuring critical system degradation is detected.
  • Correlating logs and traces across service boundaries using shared context identifiers (e.g., trace IDs).
  • Managing log retention periods based on operational needs, cost, and compliance requirements.
  • Conducting post-incident reviews with blameless analysis and tracking remediation actions to closure.

Module 7: Scalability and Performance Engineering

  • Designing stateless services to enable horizontal scaling behind load balancers.
  • Implementing caching strategies (e.g., Redis, CDN) with appropriate TTLs and cache-invalidation mechanisms.
  • Conducting load testing using production-like scenarios to identify bottlenecks before peak traffic events.
  • Optimizing database indexing and query plans based on actual execution patterns.
  • Evaluating the cost-performance trade-offs of vertical versus horizontal scaling for specific workloads.
  • Using feature flags to gradually enable resource-intensive functionality and monitor system impact.

Module 8: Dependency and Third-Party Service Management

  • Establishing service-level agreements (SLAs) and fallback strategies for critical third-party APIs.
  • Monitoring external service health and latency through synthetic transaction checks.
  • Managing API version dependencies and deprecation timelines in vendor integration points.
  • Isolating third-party integrations behind anti-corruption layers to reduce coupling.
  • Conducting vendor risk assessments for data residency, uptime history, and support responsiveness.
  • Implementing circuit breakers and retry logic with exponential backoff for resilient external calls.
!