Agile Architecture

Part 5.0 – At last hitting 88mph

Car accelerating to 88mph, leaving flaming tyre tracks

In a certain 80’s movie, the DeLorean has to have all it’s super complex components fully working in concert, a flat stretch of space, and a normal engine to push it up to the critical speed of 88mph – so that it could breakthrough time. Architecture can help set all that up so that the business can hit the critical speed for it’s success.

The previous posts have covered a lot of areas, and hopefully does not feel as though I’ve made a bunch of allegories with nothing real attached. The “Action” sections should have helped. They are based on practical experience helping teams and programmes achieve more.

It is worth calling out that to really accelerate delivery – you need a talented DevOps team and for them to work well together. This might seem obvious, but It doesn’t happen often. You need the right organisational commitment, the right project to interest the team, and the team itself needs to gel. I’ve seen situations with that combination giving orders of magnitude better delivery.

Benefits of guiding the organisation

Most of the actions and input I’ve talked about are about guiding the organisation you are working for. But how does that help the business? I think about it in terms of how a business gets from A to B. The ideal route is straight, representing the least time & cost. However, for most companies it isn’t that simple, lots of small decisions, based on the needs of the next sprint cause teams to change direction often. So, the path is wiggly, slowing down the longer term goals and results in lots of throw away parts of solutions.

Image showing going from A to B, the first is the ideal route - straight. The second is very wiggly, reflecting the reality in most companies. The last one shows a smoothed out route, bounded by architecture strategies and guidance.

I like to think of impact of architecture as bounding the daily activity, and this then smooths out those activities – saving time, money and reducing wasted effort.

Actions

The following bullets are designed to give you a small simple list (after all my rambling) on how, as an architect, you can help your organisation go faster:

  • Agile – use roadmaps and epics as a common language to keep stakeholders moving with you
  • Focused – ask should we add a feature / technology – not just add it because we could  
  • Automate, automate, automate – this is the only way to confidently make a big change quickly
  • Communicate – don’t speak Klingon
  • Loosely couple  – segment your design, ensuring isolation and enabling independent cadence
  • Backlog it – move functionality there to speed up delivery, but keep the learning
  • Follow the money – if there is no budget, it’s not going to happen
  • AI – use it, don’t get left behind, and use it ethically