A few weeks ago I kicked off a new research endeavor aiming at closing the knowledge gap related to architectural concepts and methods, and how to integrate them with agile practices (see the blog post On Agility and Architectural Engineering). Today I released the first version of a dedicated knowledge base page consisting of selected resources on the topic. All resources are classified by two categories: Fundamentals and Technical Debt. The category Fundamentals contains resources related to the following perspectives of integrating agile and architectural practices: Concepts and methods, organization and architectural design. The perspective of Technical Debt is covered by the second category. At the moment I don’t think that it is feasible to structure the knowledge base page exactly according to the four perspectives (see the aforementioned blog post) because most of the listed resources address more than one perspective. However, within each category I differentiate between the resource type: articles & books, blog post, webinars, conferences & talks.
An outstanding and dedicated subsection is the Agile Architecting Collection by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI). It’s a comprehensive collection of resources by the SEI focusing on the integration of agile and architectural practices. The collection is managed as part the SEI Digital Library. However, I opted for listing the resources on my knowledge base page again in order to provide a complete view on the resources.
I don’t claim that the page contains all the available resources on the topic but it’s a starting point at least. The knowledge base page will be extended incrementally and I would like to encourage you to send my any suggestions for further valuable resources which are currently not included in the list.
The number and coverage of the resources underpins two major assumptions of this project. First, the topic of integrating agile and architectural practices isn’t new. The state-of-the-art architectural practices are available and provide value for every project – independent of the chosen development methodology (agile, plan-driven or hybrid). Second, although it is often asserted, there is no tension between agile and architecture. Therefore, the challenge is not whether to adopt agile or architectural practices but how to best integrate agile and architectural practices. However, there is a significant knowledge gap related to architectural concepts and methods, and how to integrate them with agile practices. The new knowledge base page is an initial step towards closing this knowledge gap by making the existing architectural concepts and methods transparent and listening available references on how to integrate agile and architectural practices.
