Agile and Architecture

I've just read Scott Ambler's "Scaling Agile Development Via Architecture". I was especially happy to see it was published in Agile Journal, since it is nice to see that the realization that architecture is essential (especially for larger projects) is sinking in with the agile community.

I've been saying that for a long time: Agile projects are not different from other projects -- you need software architects (see " Agile Architect", which I posted when I started this blog in April). I've also talked about many of the points Scott mentions in his article. For example:

• "Prove it with code." I wrote about Evaluating Software Architecture in Code
• "Think through the big issues up front". See the post I made on JEDUF (Just Enough Design Up Front).
• "Allow good architectures to emerge over time". See the "Architecture phase" which I posted a few days ago (by the way, you can download both this post and the second part as single whitepaper from here).
• "Model with others". I wrote about the benefits of Pair Architecting

The bigger the project, the more it is important to think about architecture -- setting your boundaries right will enable things like Scrum of Scrums that otherwise would be (in my opinion) impossible. Anyway, if you haven't done it by now go read Scott's article it is an excellent read.

Posted by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz at 01:11 PM  Permalink