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

Keeping options open

Architecture work starts far ahead of the LRM, as shown in Figure 6.8. During this period, architects can use multiple approaches to explore solutions for decision making.

This section will examine a few techniques to refine the decision backlog to arrive at a final solution by analyzing options. In some cases, we have to eliminate options early, but in other instances, techniques that keep as many options open as possible are more appropriate.

Using a hypothesis-based solution

A Hypothesis-Based Solution (HBS) is a structured mechanism for exploring, analyzing, and finalizing solutions based on point-based design. The HBS approach is particularly useful in cases where the architect is confident about a particular solution, based on experience and expertise, even before all the requirements are known.

In such cases, architects start with one potential solution and keep exploring that solution further with an open mind until they discover negative cases...