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

Summary

This chapter focused on the importance of architecting organizations and the architect's role in creating a sustainable team structure fine-tuned for delivery.

In this chapter, we have learned about business agility and the correlation between business and IT. As an enabler, IT needs to be prepared to be nimble to support the business as new market signals emerge. There are five parameters important for enabling operational agility in IT – adopting Agile software delivery at scale, technical excellence, embracing DevOps and continuous delivery, a Lean-Agile mindset, and organizing around value. We have also examined the options of optimizing a flow by relentlessly eliminating waste, such as unnecessary manual approvals. Identifying the flow of value within IT and understanding the distribution of resources is essential for organizing people.

This chapter also introduced the concept of flow decomposition, an effective approach for creating manageable autonomous...