Book Image

Becoming an Agile Software Architect

By : Rajesh R V
Book Image

Becoming an Agile Software Architect

By: Rajesh R V

Overview of this book

Many organizations have embraced Agile methodologies to transform their ability to rapidly respond to constantly changing customer demands. However, in this melee, many enterprises often neglect to invest in architects by presuming architecture is not an intrinsic element of Agile software development. Since the role of an architect is not pre-defined in Agile, many organizations struggle to position architects, often resulting in friction with other roles or a failure to provide a clear learning path for architects to be productive. This book guides architects and organizations through new Agile ways of incrementally developing the architecture for delivering an uninterrupted, continuous flow of values that meets customer needs. You'll explore various aspects of Agile architecture and how it differs from traditional architecture. The book later covers Agile architects' responsibilities and how architects can add significant value by positioning themselves appropriately in the Agile flow of work. Through examples, you'll also learn concepts such as architectural decision backlog,the last responsible moment, value delivery, architecting for change, DevOps, and evolutionary collaboration. By the end of this Agile book, you'll be able to operate as an architect in Agile development initiatives and successfully architect reliable software systems.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Understanding Architecture in the Agile World
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: Looking through the Agile Architect's Lens
4
Section 2: Transformation of Architect Roles in Agile
8
Section 3: Essential Knowledge to Become a Successful Agile Architect
15
Section 4: Personality Traits and Organizational Influence

Maximizing value and eliminating flow barriers

Agile and Lean software development practices actively eliminate flow barriers such as phase-gated checks, handoffs, manual validations, deployments, and infrequent releases existing in traditional software development. Furthermore, agile software development practices need to consistently demonstrate the continuous, uninterrupted flow of values to rapidly respond to changing customer needs. As a key player in agile software delivery, solution architects ruthlessly focus on improving the pace at which value is delivered and substantially provide enhancing benefits to both customers and enterprises.

There are five areas where solution architects must spend their energy to maximize business value and faster flow. These are captured in the following diagram:

Figure 5.5 – Solution architect's key objectives

As we can see, solution architects maximize business value by quickly delivering the one fit for...