Agile Software Architecture

Software architecture (SA) is one of the most significant areas of research and practice in software engineering. It has been shown that getting architecture of large-scale complex systems right is not only extremely important but hugely challenging. The increasing popularity and adoption of Agile Software Development (ASD) methods have brought architecture-centric methods and practices into question as agile followers tend to perceive architecture in the context of plan-driven software development. It is widely recognized that SA needs sufficient attention for successful development and evolution of software-intensive systems and services irrespective of the software development paradigm. Given the nature of the discipline, SA methods and approaches tend to be effort-intensive and heavyweight for certain kinds of projects. There is an increasing interest in finding ways to apply architecture-centric principles and practices in an Agile fashion—Agile architecting. A good understanding of architectural principles and approaches is a prerequisite to agile architecting. The aim of this chapter is to briefly describe the fundamental concepts, principles, and practices of architecture-centric approaches. These concepts, principles, and practices are expected to provide a reader with sufficient understanding of different aspects of SA and its related methods to combine them with ASD methods. We start with a brief discussion of the points that make architecture and agile approaches seemingly incompatible. Then we present and discuss some of the key aspects of architecture-centric approaches and techniques that need to be considered for use in ASD projects. We also provide an overview of some of the key practices that have been recommended for successfully integrating architecture-centric approaches in ASD for developing large-scale, software-intensive systems.

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