Comments on: How Agile is your Architecture?

By: David O'Hara

David O'Hara — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 08:10:55 +0000

Excellent post Karthik. I think the best way to do this is to keep the boundaries clean and well defined. By doing this, you're able to have the flexibility for future paths without the need to generalize too much (YAGNI). Being sure that testability is a focus will help with this and provide a framework to lean on if, or rather WHEN, those changes come.

By: James Taylor

James Taylor — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 15:58:20 +0000

Interesting post. I posted on this topic as I think making sure that you have an agile layer of services in your architecture is critical. Check out www.edmblog.com/.../decisions-and-t

Author of "Smart (Enough) Systems" - www.smartenoughsystems.com

By: Karthik Hariharan

Karthik Hariharan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:17:57 +0000

Good point, Kalpesh. For the purposes of my discussion, I was mainly focused to software built around products being developed.

It's one thing to focus on completing the task at hand, its quite another to keep in mind things that may come down the pipeline in the future and how to be prepared for them.

While it is important to ship something initially, as a company its important to recognize that initial success may not translate to long term growth. Long term growth typically requires flexibility and foresight. I would advise anyone building software to think about things like reuse and best practices up front rather than simply focus on shipping something that "just works".

As for Telligent, we definitely like to reuse components and elements of our architecture as much as possible. As time progresses, we only get better and better at doing this.

By: Kalpesh

Kalpesh — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 13:16:08 +0000

IMHO, "Responding to change over following a plan" refers to change in the software as per the client needs & not architectural change.

I agree that having a software designed in an abstracted manner, such that it is able to handle winforms, asp.net, wpf etc is great to have. However, how many of the clients would have this as a requirement?

This is applicable to companies who are into product development & see it a potential for multiple platform. Even then, it will be better to go for one platform, deliver it, see the results/mistakes & develop things later – finding common things between platforms & making plug-n-play components.

Also, shipping something is important than having a general purpose architecture (which would handle everything that it comes its way)

Since you work with Telligent (a product company) – can you do me a favor & ask the architects about – is it required to have such an architecture?

I think these people are smart to decide than me having said things.

I would love to hear views from the team at your end.

You know me already

You can mail me at shahkalpesh at gmail d0tc0m.