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Software architecture and design in Agile
Last Wednesday (10.04.2013) we provided a webinar '12 principles of Agile that make it extremely successful'. After that webinar there was one interesting question I want to answer here. This might be interesting to TYPO3 developers as well (including core developers :-)
The question was: "Andrei, do you have any technical recipes about architecture of the projects to support frequently changing requirements".
Why this question is important? Sorry, but I'll repeat myself: We all live in the fast changing world and IT world (technologies, hardware, business models, processes, people) change even faster then other areas. So we need to respond to changes. Architecture and design are not exceptions!
To answer the question in terms of Agile philosophy I refer to the one of 12 principles of Agile, and it's principle #10:
Simplicity - the art of maximizing the amount of work not done - is essential.
To understand this principle you can check a 'Standish Group Chaos Report' about features/functionality used (and not used) in developed software. It says that nearly half of functionality that is developed is never used. So why should we produce it? Why should we spend time and money to it?
Based on this you should remember that nearly all features which are never used include time which is spent on architecture and design. So we build architecture and design for something useless!
When you make architecture or design for your products, please remember:
- Agile is iterational development model, so your design and architecture should grow also iterationally. Step by step.
- Do only what is needed right now. Produce good enough architecture and design for current situation. Don't think about long run, because requirements can change really fast. Don't waste time and money!
Here are some articles regarding "just enough" approach:
- http://www.agilebuddha.com/agile/agility-barely-good-enough/
- http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/barelyGoodEnough.html
- http://www.agileforall.com/2009/02/23/new-to-agile-remember-one-thing-just-enough-just-in-time/
(!) We are planning a new webinar about Agile. Please help us to select topic which will be interesting for you: vote for the next webinar.
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