Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development

Chapter 3. Stakeholder Engagement

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools," and "Customer collaboration over contract negotiation" comprise half of the values of the Agile Manifesto. These values are no less suitable to architecture than to any other facet of Agile development, and they lie at the heart of this chapter. Perhaps we hear much about the other two principles of working software and embracing change because they're closer to the programmer, and because popular Agile is a programmers' movement. Maybe half of software development is about nerd stuff happening at the whiteboard and about typing at the keyboard. But the other half is about people and relationships. There are few software team activities where this becomes more obvious than during architecture formulation.

This chapter is about the people in a software development effort, the roles they play, and a little bit about the processes that guide them. To summarize the chapter, everyone is in some small part an architect, and everyone has a crucial role to play in good project beginnings. We'll maybe have some surprising things to say about customers and architects, too.

The Value Stream

Software people work together to build products such as programs and documentation, each one of which adds value to the end user. They also build internal artifacts and go through internal processes that individually have value. The question is: who has responsibility for timely product delivery to the customer? In today's ...