Agile Architecture — Just Enough!

When I started my career waterfall, V-Cycle were common software development lifecycles. It was clear that after the requirement phase the design phase starts. Typically, the architect in an engagement was responsible for this. Often it ended up in a Big Design Up Front (BDUF) what nowadays is seen as an anti-pattern. The result was a word document or in a model driven approach a formal model (e.g. UML). Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method was used to safeguard the compliance of the design to the given requirements. The next phase: implementation was based on the stable design and the requirements, at least in theory. Change request came all the time and sometimes had an impact on design and architecture, but a well-defined Architecture could last for long time (sometimes even centuries).

With the rise of Agile this changed … and in the beginning it wasn’t clear at all how architecture and design shall be handled. In SCRUM even the role of an architect wasn’t defined. So being an Architect in an agile engagement was quite challenging. A lot of agile methodologies where defined and evolved starting from the Agile Manifesto. SCRUM, DAD, LeSS, NEXUS, SAFe to name some. The way they propose to handle design and architecture differs and the level of detail.

Still an Architects needs to define how to safeguard that the proposed solution will fulfil the functional…