Agile Architecture

Traditionally, we attempt to make the right architectural decisions early due to the significant anticipated cost affiliated with making incorrect decisions. But this contradicts agile practices which have taught us to embrace change. So how do agile and architecture come together? Conceptually, the goal of agile architecture must be to eliminate the architectural significance of change by crafting software that can easily adapt to change. In practice, developing agile architecture is much more difficult.

Software architecture is organic. The architectural goals you set to achieve early in the development effort differ from those you'll need to satisfy later. Change occurring throughout the software development lifecycle impacts architecture. The ability to accommodate shifts in architecture is directly related to the dependencies between software modules. In this session, we examine patterns and principles that lead to agile architecture. Extensive discussion is devoted to modularizing units of deployment, and how code can be created and organized to create more flexible, reusable, maintainable, extensible, and testable software components. Topics of discussion range from coupling between classes to the dependency structure between your modules of deployment. Examples gleaned from real world J2EE development effort will be used in a pragmatic case study that examines the evolution of a system from its initial deployment through a number of refactorings that positively influenced the architectural resiliency of the final product.allow you to apply many of these concepts immediately.

About Kirk Knoernschild

Kirk is software developer with a passion for building great software. He takes a keen interest in design, architecture, application development platforms, agile development, and the IT industry in general, especially as it relates to software development. His recent book, Java Application Architecture was published in 2012, and presents 18 patterns that help you design modular software.

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