I’ve returned from the Agile Development Practices conference in Orlando, FL and have uploaded my Agile Engineering for Architects slide deck and also the Impact Estimation tool used in the presentation. Thanks to all those that attended, I thought for the first time out this new presentation came off pretty well. We’ll see what the reviews say.

Some questions I was asked and conversations I had afterwards pertained to the question “What’s the role of Architects and Architecture in Agile?” The context is that in the Waterfall process, the role of Architects and Architecture is fairly well understood. Architects are heavily involved in the design phase and they’re expected to produce an Architecture that can be used in the Development phase. But as companies are moving to Agile, the architects in my session were asking me, “What’s my role now?” and “Where do I fit in?”

It’s questions that, honestly, I had never thought about before. I could tell by the tone of some of their questions that they had been told there’s not much of a role for them, and this left them a bit miffed. They had been told that agile teams “design on the fly” and continually refactor their system’s design. Better judgement told them this wasn’t right, but they didn’t know.

I know what’s worked form me when I’ve been the lead architect on a large agile project, but the thought of putting this into some best practices hadn’t really struck me until I was getting these questions. Maybe this would be something good for a future blog post.

So, what do you think? Any opinions on the role of Architects and Architecture in Agile?