#211 – The Architect

Architects, no matter if they’re focused on the enterprise, solution or system, and often the guardians of the Non-Functional Requirements, should not be sitting in an Ivory Tower somewhere far away to dream up visions of the perfect architecture for the Scrum Team(s) to follow.

Rather than being a role external to the teams, or even a person in the team, being an Architect should be a competency that all Developers in the Scrum Team have. To get there, having a dedicated Architect in the team, or team of teams/Tribe, could be a start, as long as they coach and build Architect competencies with the Developers.

In our eyes, the Architect competency is to 1) help the Scrum Team understand why its Done Product Increments should be aligned with relevant architectural guidelines and principles, 2) educate the other Developers and the organization on how to build emergent and evolvable architecture and what it should consist of, based on analyzing the business and domain requirements, and 3) build the indicators of whether the architecture follows its desired characteristics (i.e., Fitness Functions).