Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development

Chapter 2. Agile Production in a Nutshell

This is the big-picture chapter, the get-started-quick chapter. It's for those readers who make it only through the first pages of most books they pick up in spite of best intentions to struggle through to the end. We got you this far. Hold on for eight pages as we describe six basic activities of Lean Architecture and Agile software development.

These activities are neither waterfall phases nor steps; however, each one provides a focus for what a team member is doing at any given time. The ensuing chapters are:

• Chapter 3 : Stakeholder Engagement

• Chapter 4 : Problem Definition

• Chapter 5 : What the System Is, Part I: Lean Architecture

• Chapter 6 : What the System Is, Part II: Coding It Up

• Chapter 7 : System Functionality

• Coding it up: Chapter 8 : Basic assembly, and Chapter 9 : The DCI Architecture

Here's the skinny on what's to come.

Engage the Stakeholders

What is a "stakeholder"? Team members, system engineers, architects, and testers all have a stake in creating sound system form. There may be many more: use your imagination. People appreciate being invited to the party early. And remember the Lean Secret: everybody, all together, from early on.

Identify the people and systems that care that this system even exists, what it does, or how it does it. Remember that you are building a system. A system (Weinberg again) is a collection of parts, none of which is interesting if separated from the others. Snowden defines it as "a network that has coherence." ...