How much architecture does an agile team need up front? Most agile methods are surprisingly silent when it comes to this question. Scrum regards architecture as an issue the team has to deal with on its own discretion — and thus does not include any advice. In Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Methodology for Small Teams, Cutter Senior Consultant Alistair Cockburn suggests having a lead designer who is responsible for creating the system architecture description — “usually fairly early in the first iteration” — but also emphasizes that “the architecture will probably evolve” and gives two strategies to help evolving: Walking Skeleton and Incremental Rearchitecture.

XP finally suggests using a metaphor to keep up the technical vision of the system; unfortunately, one of the most neglected practices of XP. XP also relies heavily on refactoring Read more …

The subtitle of Extreme Programming Explained , Kent Beck’s groundbreaking book, is “Embrace Change.” The full range of behaviors that this seemingly simple phrase can be affect are in fact very far-reaching. Part of this impact can be explained by altering the focus of the phrase to one that is a little, well, fuzzier: embrace uncertainty. In his intriguing talk on the future of agile development at the Agile 2008 conference, David Anderson commented about three outcomes: right, wrong, and uncertain. Of the three, uncertainty, is the hardest to deal with in most organizations. The comment, “I don’t know,” is often an unacceptable response, while it is often the best response.

To a manager’s question, “How much will project Zebra cost?” the answer: “Well, somewhere between $2 and $6 million,” would be Read more …