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

Assessing system quality

Stop-the-line is a technique used in manufacturing introduced by Taiichi Ohno of TPS, where a big red button is pushed whenever someone sees a critical quality issue in the production line. The idea was products with quality issues moved to production have much more severe consequences than stopping the line and fixing problems as and when they occur. Early detection and rectification of defects minimizes wastage. Hence, early and continuous quality assurance is required for the efficient delivery of quality solutions with optimal cost of development.

Brian Marick's Agile testing quadrants are a useful tool to understand various aspects of Agile testing. An adapted version of this was developed by Janet Gregory and Lisa Crispin is shown on the left side of the following figure:

Figure 9.17 – Agile testing quadrants and risk-based performance testing model

As shown in the figure, architecture quality testing is in Q4...