Architecture in large scale agile development

Abstract

In order to welcome changing requirements (even late in development) agile development should enable the architecture to incorporate these changes and therefore to emerge over time. This implies not finalizing the architecture upfront. Moreover, in small agile teams it is assumed that there is no dedicated role for an architect – instead the whole team should be responsible for the architecture. In large-scale agile development the requirement for an emergent architecture still holds true. However, it is unrealistic to ask members of e.g. ten teams to be equally responsible for the architecture. Moreover, the role and support for the architecture depends not only on the degree of the size but as well on the degree of complexity. In this paper I report on the experience using different models for supporting emergent architecture in large environments that take the degree of complexity into account.