Agile has emerged as a popular approach to solution delivery in today’s rapidly changing business landscape. Its emphasis on speed, flexibility, and customer-centricity is understandably appealing. However, agile also presents challenges for Enterprise Architects, traditionally seen as big-picture strategists who plan IT infrastructures with a long-term view. Here we will explore strategies to harmonize architecture design with Agile solution delivery, ensuring the two can work together to deliver robust, flexible solutions that support business goals.
Opposing Forces
Agile and architecture can seem like opposing forces. Agile teams focus on delivering working software in short, iterative cycles, often prioritizing speed over long-term planning. On the other hand, Enterprise Architects are tasked with ensuring that systems are scalable, sustainable, and aligned with business strategy – all of which require a degree of planning and foresight.
Reconciling these differences is no small feat, but it’s crucial for businesses that want to combine the strategic benefits of effective architecture with the operational advantages of Agile.
The Path to Harmony
Organizations need to rethink their approach to both harmonize architecture and Agile. Here are some strategies to strike the right balance.
Evolving Architecture: Instead of designing comprehensive architecture upfront, consider an evolving approach. Start with a high-level architecture that provides enough structure for Agile teams to move forward but is flexible enough to be refined and expanded as the organization evolves and more is learned about the system and its requirements.
Architect as a Guide: The Architect should act as a guide, actively engaged and supporting Agile teams as they make design decisions. This means being available to answer questions, provide insights, and help resolve architectural impediments, all while ensuring that the team’s decisions align with the broader architectural vision.
Governance and Standards: Establish architectural standards and principles that Agile teams must follow. This helps ensure consistency across the organization and maintainability of the solutions without undermining the delivery team’s agility. The key is to find the right balance – too many rules can be restrictive, but too few can lead to chaos.
Incremental Validation: Architects should work closely with Agile teams to validate solutions against architectural requirements on an ongoing basis (not waiting until a solution has been developed and is ready for release). This incremental validation approach allows for early detection and resolution of architectural issues, minimizing the risk of rework later.
Foster a Shared Understanding: Architects and Agile teams must understand and respect each other’s roles. Regular communication, joint workshops, and training sessions can foster a shared understanding and promote collaboration. Architect participation in stand-up meetings, sprint planning sessions and retrospectives is critical.
Architectural Backlog: Consider maintaining an architectural backlog and operating your architecture practice as an agile team. The backlog can include architectural enablers – items that prepare the system for future functionality or improve non-functional characteristics like scalability or performance. These items can be prioritized and worked on just like any other backlog item.
Arch-DevOps Culture: Cultivating an Arch-DevOps culture, where the architecture, development and operations teams work together throughout the project lifecycle, can help ensure that architectural considerations like deployment, monitoring, and maintenance are addressed in an Agile manner.
While it can be challenging to harmonize architecture design with Agile solutions delivery, it’s not an impossible task. The key is to foster a collaborative environment where architecture and Agile can coexist and complement each other. Organizations can leverage the best of both worlds by adopting an evolving approach to architecture, positioning the Architect as a guide embedded with the delivery team, establishing appropriate governance, and fostering a shared understanding. They can enjoy the speed, flexibility, and customer-centricity of Agile while also ensuring that their systems are robust, scalable, and strategically aligned – all of which are hallmarks of effective architecture. This harmony between Agile and Architecture is not only attainable, but it is also a potent combination that can drive businesses forward in today’s dynamic landscape.
