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Servant Architecture
Can ‘agile’ and ‘architecture’ even be used in the same sentence?
The other day I had an interesting discussion with our architects around agile and architecture. I was invited to their weekly architecture guild meeting, to present my thoughts on architecture from an agile perspective.
To be honest, I was a bit anxious going in. As a coach, preaching agile in a traditional and hierarchical organization, I’m kind of used to the strange looks and sometimes even hostile body language, but architects are on a whole different level — they are generally experienced, knowledgeable, and not at all afraid to share their point of view.
The weeks before the meeting I did a lot of reading up on architecture in order to prepare myself for the coming architectural tribunal — or so my anxiety told me this was going to be. I didn’t stumble upon a plethora of articles on agile architecture, to be honest. Nevertheless, also through some in-depth talks with a fellow agile coach, I did form a strong opinion on what I think agile architecture should be like.
After taking a sip of water, I cleared my throat and presented my simple slides to the stern-looking architects. At times I would scan the room for responses to my bold statements, looking for body language and lifting eyebrows. As I said, they weren’t…
