Getting Agile

I can‘t agree more with the views expressed in Avinash Nicklas Chan Kumar Malik‘s blog entry 'Just say “no” to your architect'. Too many times I have seen the reach of “The Architecture Group“ overextended into the details of product development. Overstepping the bounds in these cases resulted in issues such as:

• Bringing down the morale of the team
• Wasting time in discussions about the “best“ way to implement a feature
• Overlooking a more elegant solution because the architect did not listen
• And in the end, a lack of respect for “The Architecture Group”

As software architects, it is our responsibility to not only make the most appropriate choices based on technology, vendor, and cost. We must also take into account the experience of existing resources, business vision, configuration management and operations. This is a difficult balance to achieve and requires a broad knowledge base to pull from. It becomes more difficult when you throw implementation into the mix or lose the respect of the development teams.