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

How different frameworks handle architect roles

There is no architect role in Agile software development methodologies such as Scrum. These frameworks fundamentally reiterate the principle of the Agile Manifesto where the best architectures emerge from self-organizing teams. However, when product development scales across multiple teams, the architect role becomes essential for technical leadership and alignment. Therefore, most of the Agile scaling frameworks explicitly reference Agile architect roles.

Scaled Agile Framework

Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) treats architecture as one of the major disciplines. There are three architect roles defined in SAFe – enterprise architect, solution architect, and system architect. However, architects are positioned outside teams, which is a significant deviation from the principles of the manifesto for Agile software development.

Enterprise architects operate on the portfolio, responsible for shaping up the technology strategy...