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

Measuring Agile architecture maturity

Measuring and improving is as important as adopting Agile architecture. It provides a simple mechanism for teams to reflect, determine areas of improvement, and take the right steps toward the desired target without top-down enforcement. These assessments are done collectively by the team, and help to quantify the maturity of architecture practices and efficiently drive continuous improvements. The measurement system itself must be Agile and Lean to be efficient and effective. These assessments ideally should be done periodically, such as the end of every third iteration.

There is no global ideal target state for these assessments. Instead, self-organized teams determine what their desired state is not required as a team and work toward achieving their goals. The Agile architecture measurement framework shown in the following diagram is based on the five principles of Agile architecture on a five-point scale:

Figure...