Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development

Preface

What my grandfather did was create options. He worked hard to allow my father to have a better education than he did, and in turn my father did the same.

—Danny Hillis, quoted in The Clock of the Long Now, p. 152.

Harry Grinnell, who was co-author James Coplien's grandfather, was a life-long postal worker, but many of his life's accomplishments can be found in his avocations. His father was an alcoholic and his mother a long-suffering religious woman. Grandpa Harry dropped out of school after eighth year to take a job in a coal yard to put food on the table after much of the family budget had gone to support his father's habit. Harry would go on to take up a job as a postal worker in 1925 at the age of 19, and married Jim's grandmother the next year. He faced the changes of the Great Depression, of two world wars, and of great economic and social change.

You're probably wondering why an Agile book starts with a story about Grandpa Harry. It's because his avocation as a master craftsman in woodworking together with his common-sense approach to life offer a fitting metaphor for the Agile and Lean styles of development. This is a book about common sense. Of course, one person's common sense is another one's revelation. If you are just learning about Agile and Lean, or are familiar only with their pop versions, you may find new insights here. Even if you know about Agile and Lean and are familiar with architecture, you're likely to learn from this book about how the two ideas can ...