Architecture in an Agile Organization

Chris Sterling (SolutionsIQ), Bryan Stallings (Copresenter and Agile Consultant at SolutionsIQ)

Discovery Sessions · Planning

Monday, 14:00, 1 hour 30 minutes | Renaissance East

This facilitated discussion focuses on Architecture and its role in an Agile organization. Multi-team projects and mid-sized and larger organizations often require the standards and guidelines that collectively could be called architecture. It is a myth that Agile projects do not need architecture. So why is it that architects often have trouble interacting with Agile teams? A common theme in Agile is balancing the creative freedom that Agile teams need with just enough constraints to ensure overall success. Architects, like managers, have a history of imposing the type of command and control that Agile teams correctly rebel against. On the other hand, without direction from a higher-level context projects can easily go astray due to localized sub-optimizations. For example if two Agile teams work on one project and each works independently then their end results are not likely to work together. An architect, or someone playing the role, normally handles the type of cross-team technical coordination that is required to keep the two teams on the same track. Architects fall into a number of categories some deal with day-to-day development and are called Solutions Architects, others called Enterprise Architects are tasked with understanding business needs and converting them into technical strategies. Scaling Agile across teams or an organization requires people to play the Architect role in a new way. This session will be driving out the ways that enterprise and solutions architects can help in the results-oriented Agile software delivery within an organization. We will break-up into workgroups with each group looking for answers on a particular aspect of this issue. We will focus on understanding: 1) The Architect's role within Agile methodologies such as Scrum, Lean, and XP. 2) How architects can either be a good Product Owner or help guide the Product Owner's prioritization and work breakdown on larger projects with multiple teams. 3) How Solution Architects may become part of an Agile team or work as a "free agent" in helping guide specific product deliveries. 4) How to keep good design across product components, common architectures across Agile teams, and maintain an architectural strategy across an Agile organization. Please bring your thoughts, skepticism, and understanding, so that we can all learn how Architects and Agile organizations can really work together.

Chris is an Agile Coach and Certified Scrum Trainer and has performed consulting and training for the last three years with companies like Microsoft, Expedia, BEA, and the State of Washington. Chris is an original developer for the open source tool Story Test IQ (STIQ), a project that combines utility from Fit, FitNesse, and Selenium to create automated acceptance tests (http://storytestiq.sourceforge.net/). As founder of the International Association of Software Architects (IASA) Puget Sound Chapter, Chris is very involved with coding and evangelizing good coding practices like Test Driven Development (TDD), Continuous Integration, and collective code ownership, each a staple of the environment he has fostered and encouraged working at Solutions IQ and on projects like Story Test IQ (STIQ).