Agile Architecture Workshop: A Pragmatic Approach

2 days

Ideal class size is up to 20 students. Price: Contact us at training@wirfs-brock dot com. Price includes all course materials and a 100+ page course guidebook. Workshop leader travel and lodging are extra.

"Let your architecture emerge" and "Always implement what you actually need, never what you think you might need." However, complex software systems have lots of moving parts, dependencies, challenges, and unknowns. Counting on the software architecture to properly evolve without any planning or design investigations can be risky. On agile projects, software architecture activities should not be pie-in-the-sky experiments that slow down the delivery of working code. Yet producing working code based on a shaky architecture isn't sustainable either. This workshop was developed by Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, inventor of Responsibility-Driven Design in order to bring practical architecture techniques and practices to an agile audience.

In this workshop you'll learn practices and techniques for effectively defining, refining, and evolving your software architecture that support agile values. You'll learn the difference between architecting on a small team and architecting on larger, more complex projects as well as what it takes to be a successful architectural wayfinder and design steward.


Workshop Objectives

The goal of this short workshop is to enable you to:

• Understand agile architecture and how it differs from traditional software architecture
• Apply techniques for planning and bounding architecture activities
• Incorporate small team architecture practices into your agile projects
• Learn techniques and practices for architecting on larger projects and programs
• Recognize the value of architecture stewardship
• Communicate architecture to diverse stakeholders
• Recognize and manage architectural debt

Workshop Topics

• What is different about architecting on agile projectst?
• Architecture practices for small projects
• The architecture landscape for an agile project
• Larger projects and program techniques: Landing zones, Feature roadmaps, Architecture Spikes
• Identifying and managing architectural risks
• Alternatives for tracking and coordinating architectural activities
• Defining and using a project landing zone
• Defining acceptance criteria for architecture qualities
• Monitoring technical and architectural debt
• What architects do: wayfinding, keeping the system "soft", prototyping and exploring design options
• Communicating architecture to others
• Drawing 101 for architects
• Balancing, optimizing, and aligning stakeholder requirements
• Architecture stewardship
• The hands-on architect

Prerequisites
Attendees should have some familiarity with agile development practices and software development and architecture.

Audience
Who should attend? Product architects, technical architects, program managers, developers, team leaders, or any interdisciplinary product or cross-functional team working in an agile ways.

Workshop Information
Approximately 50% of the workshop is short exercises, discussions, and project simulations; 50% short lectures. An optional project-specific workshop day can be added to address specific architecture practices and concerns.

For additional information, please contact us at training@wirfs-brock.com