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

Understanding the challenging environment of architects

Today's lean and dynamic software development environments pose many challenges for architects. Agile software development has amplified these challenges since many traditional practices do not go very well with Agile delivery. Confusing architect roles, commanding and controlling ways of working, bureaucratic governance, and tons of disconnected documentation are causes for concern. An in-depth analysis of these challenges follows in the next section and will help us learn about the sources of pain to rediscover and reposition architects to deliver better value to an organization.

A myriad of architect roles have impacted clarity

The term architect opens a Pandora's box of confusion. The architect role is still one of the most misunderstood roles in the software development world. Unlike some other roles, such as product manager or Scrum master, there is no unified role definition for architects in Agile software...