The Role of the Agile Architect

With the emphasis on leaving decisions until the "last responsible moment," the need for a coherent architecture in agile development is sometimes overlooked. Confusion surrounding the architect's role and how to identify an effective architecture often leads to bottlenecks in delivery. When the architect's attention is divided between guiding the team's future direction and supporting the deliverables for the current iteration, problems inevitably arise. As an experienced agile architect, Robert Baumann shares his real-world experiences and the practices that have worked for him. He explains an agile architect's proper team role-a focus on key requirements and continuously feeding the delivery team's pipeline with a cohesive technology roadmap. Explore the key deliverables that architects provide to help projects succeed-guidance, mentoring, tools development, and prototyping to demonstrate critical aspects of the system under development. By better understanding the role and practices of the agile architect, you'll help agile teams more predictably deliver high quality products to the business.