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

Agile development and traditional architecture – an oxymoron?

The perception of paradox came out of contrasting approaches adopted by Agile software development and the waterfall model. While Agile software developments are heavily rooted in iterative development, traditional developments follow rigid sequential steps.

To comprehend the cause of this perception, it is imperative to define what we mean by software architecture and its purpose.

Architecture as a continuum

Architecture is often misunderstood and misused in the software industry. There are many architecture definitions referenced in the document What is Your Definition of Architecture, published by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University.

The very first definition of architecture came from Fred Brooks, writing about computer architecture in his book, Planning a Computer System: Project Stretch 1962, inspired by structural engineering:

"Computer architecture, like...