I have written about agile architecture before, but since I have been working with a group of architects recently (the kind that build software, not the kind that build buildings), I figured it's time to revisit the topic. The question that kept on coming up was "how do you do proper architecture in agile?". It's a good question. Agile is all about just in time rather than up front planning and traditional architecture looks a heck of a lot like a type of upfront planning. We even have a special term for what we want in agile environments - emergent architecture. Architecture that emerges just in time from the team. The problem is that while emergent architecture works fine in some problem domains, there are others where emergent architecture just isn't enough. If you're designing banking systems, or safety critical healthcare systems, or even just regular old big complex systems, relying on emergent architecture simply doesn't cut it. You need some level of upfront thinking (or at least longer term than a sprint or two ahead) to make sure your product doesn't fall in a heap.

Some of the scaled frameworks recognise this and introduce the concept of "intentional architecture" for the upfront stuff. The amount of intentional vs emergent architecture you do is a function of the type of system you are building. That's great but it still doesn't tell us much about how to do architecture (emergent, intentional or otherwise) in an agile environment. Before we look at how to do architecture, we should start by understanding what architecture is, and more specifically, what it isn't. Let me start by saying something really important. Remember this, there will be a test later - architecture is not the same as design. Many organisations, actually all organisations that I have worked for so far, have been getting architecture wrong. In these organisations, the architects didn't actually do any architecture. They produced detailed design documents. That's design. Not architecture. Detailed design absolutely should not be done up front.

Hi Folks

I had a discussion recently with a group of software architects about whether Architecture had a place in Agile development. This is an important (and at times hotly debated) topic so I'm going to expand on the discussion here.