Preach What You Practice

The impact of the cultural values of agility: architecture thinking (5/7)

“Individuals and interactions above processes and tools” Empowering people means giving them autonomy. But autonomy often leads to coordination problems. To prevent everyone autonomously choosing a different direction, it is necessary to focus the collective energies. The role of architecture in an agile organisation is... keep on reading

An architect’s attitude in an Agile world (4/7)

Working with Agile requires architects to have a specific mindset towards their work. It is not just about doing it in an agile way, but mainly about being agile, as an attitude. On the one hand, you are ensuring agility by providing a framework, on the other hand, you are often a pioneer for change. This is true of the... keep on reading

Agile and architecture (3/7)

The focus of the previous articles in this section was the need for agility and the role which architecture and architects play in developing the evolutionary path of the organisation. But what is the relationship between Agile and architecture? The starting point for Agile is the Agile Manifesto. The Agile Manifesto is... keep on reading

The architect as explorer on the evolutionary path (2/7)

Agility has become more important than ever for organisations. The arrival of the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1993 was the start of a technology push which has accelerated exponentially over the last few years. A combination of strongly decreasing prices for computational power and data storage and the availability of internet as a... keep on reading

Introduction to the Agile with Architecture series (1/7)

Agile has come under fire. Matthew Kern, in his “Agile is Dead” post argues that Agile as a marketing term for selling consultancy services has already peaked. His post spread like wild fire. Matthew Kerns is showing us where it hurts. I recognize the image that is conjured up in the “Stop being so Agile” post.... keep on reading