Agile Architecture Method

- J.D. Meier , Alex Homer, David Hill, Jason Taylor , Prashant Bansode , Lonnie Wall, Rob Boucher Jr, Akshay Bogawat.

The Agile Architecture Method is a flexible set of steps for integrating important decisions into your architecture and design approach.

Share an architecture / design approach from what works in practice.
Bridge the gap between “agile with no design” and “big up front with no agility” ... it’s iterative/incremental by design.
It’s a meta-process in that it’s inclusive and expandable, but hones in the key things.

Agile Architecture Method Steps

This Agile Architecture Method approach extends these proven core activities to create security specific activities. These activities include:

Step 1. Identify Architecture Objectives. Clear objectives help you to focus on your architecture, and on solving the right problems in your design. Good objectives help you to determine when you have completed the current phase, and when you are ready to move to the next phase.
Step 2. Key Scenarios. Use key scenarios to focus your design on what matters most, and to evaluate your candidate architectures when they are ready.
Step 3. Application Overview. Understand your application type, deployment architecture, architectural styles, and technologies in order to connect your design to the real world in which the application will have to operate.
Step 4. Key Hot Spots. Identify key hotspots based on quality attributes and the architecture frame. These are the areas where mistakes are most often made when designing an application.
Step 5. Candidate Solutions. Create a candidate architecture or architectural spike and evaluate it against your key scenarios, hot spots, and deployment constraints.