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

Making the work transparent

Transparency and openness are fundamental principles of agile software development frameworks as they help to demonstrate the value of the work done by individuals and teams at all levels. Work transparency is crucial for architects to show their work consistently to all stakeholders.

The following points explore several ways to make architecture work more transparent:

  • Kanban boards, burn-ups, and burn-down charts are consistently used by agile teams to show their work. Seamlessly integrating architecture work into these boards is an excellent mechanism to demonstrate architecture activities.
  • An architecture roadmap showing the time sequence of decisions and enablers is a handy tool for evidencing what activities are in hand for architects. Roadmaps can exist at the initiative level as well as at the team level.
  • Application health dashboards capturing the current state and next desired state are excellent ways to show how continuous improvements...