Ensuring flexible architecture for scalable systems

The challengeHow agile projects drift into rigidity

Many agile projects that have begun with good intentions develop rigidity and slowly lose the core principle of Agile – being flexible. As managers prefer established processes and rarely waver from the defined architecture, the application slowly develops inflexibility as the applications becomes more complex, increase in size, demands on performance, unexpected maintenance changes, production changes, team changes, and above all changes in the core technology stack either due to redundancy or version changes and upgrades.

Adding to the woes is the fear of change, as teams are worried that if they make any changes, they are unsure of impact on the complete application or on performance. It is not uncommon, if the enterprise architect assigned to the project during the early phases of the project is given additional responsibilities or reassigned, leading to lesser and lesser time spent with the current project.

The approachKeeping architecture flexible with Integrated Agile Delivery

Leveraging Integrated Agile Delivery Model, we ensure that all projects will maintain the core principles of Agile Methodology.

• Architects are embedded in the development team. We ensure that the agile architects are embedded in the teams to ensure that they are completely available to the team, and perform prototyping, and architect review frequently. The architects are part of the retrospectives and ensure that the feedback received is addressed and corrective steps taken.
• Flexibility on architecting the solution. The architects constantly review the architecture to ensure that the application maintains flexibility, and performance. As the complexity of the application keeps growing with time, they continuously strive to ensure that flexibility and performance are maintained or improved.
• Ability to adapt to new technology stacks. The architects ensure that they keep track of new technology changes and work to ensure that every piece of the application architecture can be replaced or updated to support constantly changing business needs by taking advantage of the new technology tools and offerings in the market. In the process, they ensure that the technology debt is always low.
• Breaking down complexity. The architects along with the product owners, scrum masters strive to ensure that they break down complexity of any story. They ensure that the user stories are simple and easy for the development team to code, test and implement.

The outcomeSustainable, future-ready architecture

Our architects, leveraging the Integrated Agile Delivery Methodology, ensure that the architecture is flexible and manage complexity and performance as the applications keep growing. The team’s core focus is on ensuring a sustainable software architecture that ensures that new technology stacks, tools and products, can be incorporated into the existing application.

Good to knowFrequently asked questions

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