Wilfred Thinking Aloud

Agile vs. Monumental

A couple of days ago, I again experienced that traffic jams are just excellent opportunities for contemplation. While thinking about some recent experiences doing architecture work, my mind drifted off and I found myself trying comparing the different definitions of architecture of my customers. (I also found myself in need of the emergency break.)

All of a sudden, it dawned into me that these customers not only had different ideas on the approach for producing the architecture, but also different objectives. I'm sure everybody already figured that out, but quite honest, it was a nano-revelation for me.

I always figured that the objectives of the agile architect were similar to the objectives of the monumental architect, e.g. guarding systemic qualities like performance, scalability, security, etc. But I think I've come to believe that these are really 'afterthoughts' for the agile architect: we will fix it if it becomes a problem.

There is however one thing that can never be an afterthought in an agile project. The focus of an agile architect (aka coach) is predominantly on guarding a quality that is generally not listed as a systemic quality. The agile architect focuses on parallelization of the development process.

If working in parallel is not a requirement, then providing structuring principles is not necessary at all. However, if the size of the team increases beyond two, then there is a need to provide more structure, since people will need to work in parallel.