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High power broad area semiconductor lasers have found increasing applications in pumping of solid state laser systems and fiber amplifiers, frequency doubling, medical systems and material processing. Packaging including the assembly design, process and thermal management, has a significant impact on the optical performance and reliability of a high power broad area laser. In this paper, we introduce the package structures and assembling process of 980nm broad area lasers and report the performances including output power, thermal behavior and far fields. We will report two types of high power broad area laser assemblies. One is a microchannel liquid cooled assembly and the other is a conduction cooled CT-mount assembly. Optical powers of 15W and 10W were achieved from a 980nm broad area laser with a 120 m stripe width in a microchannel liquid cooled assembly and conduction cooled CT-mount assembly, respectively. Furthermore, a high power of 6.5W out of fiber was demonstrated from a pigtailed, fully packaged butterfly-type module without TEC (thermoelectric cooler). The measurement results showed that thermal management is the key in not only improving output power, but also significantly improving beam divergence and far field distribution. The results also showed that the die attach solder can significant impact the reliability of high power broad area lasers and that indium solder is not suitable for high power laser applications due to electromigration at high current densities and high temperatures.