“Just Enough Architecture” — Striking the Balance in Agile Environments

Have you ever thought about —

“Why are architects great at creating themselves to be the biggest bottlenecks in a project?”

I understand this question will raise eyebrows!

How can I generalize thousands of architects in multitude of role titles who are striving hard to produce impeccable solution design, implementation strategies and contributing towards market leading products?

No, I am not generalizing anything by asking this question.

I am rather trying to highlight what I observe and provide a perspective.

In any organizational setting, architects are one of most critical contributor. This is the person with “The Thinking Hat”. He is the one who is trying to think all the possible pathways using which a successful solution can be implemented. He is the one who is bringing his years of hard work and experience to play when he sits down to solve a complicated business or technology problem. He is the one who is toiling hard to look at the criticalities of a solution including the edge scenarios and pitfalls where “his design” or rightly put “the solution” may fail. Hence to overcome failures, an architect goes to a great length to ensure on what is being proposed is sets up the project for success.

However, we may be saying these time and again —

“Failure brings learnings.”

“One shouldn’t be afraid to failing.”

But!

But we all know “that’s not what we work towards!”

“Failure is inevitable at times but not FUN! Essentially we work towards success and not failure. Hence accepting and learning from failure is one thing.But with any endeavor, we don’t strive to fail. We rather strive to win and succeed.

But this is where the real challenge is. In order to ensure that a design a successful solution and ensuring everything that is required for it, may require a lot of effort in collaboration, thinking, evaluation and conceptual testing. Here lies the risk of becoming an overhead or a bottleneck. This syndrome is widely know as “Big Design Up Front”.

Agility isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a necessity. Agile methodologies have revolutionized software development, emphasizing iterative progress, customer collaboration, and the flexibility to adapt to change.

In my opinion, as architects, we are always hoping that we are using agile mindsets in all our thinking process and assumably not trying the boil the entire ocean to come up with an idea that will solve the problem in hand.

We must be wary of the fact that if we don’t go about doing architecture which is focussed on breaking down problems in terms of value and time to market, we will be causing the bottlenecks for our teams.

What if we found ourselves building something that nobody wanted? In that case, what did it matter if we did it on time and on budget?

— Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (quoting from ? Scaled Agile, Inc. article on Epics)

A great deal of objectivity in our solution approach to overcome balancing on the fact — architecture is a facilitator and enabler vs a bottleneck.

Amidst this paradigm shift, the concept of “Just Enough Architecture” has emerged as a vital strategy, ensuring that projects remain nimble while still grounded in solid architectural practices.

With the above context established, let me now elaborate further on the concept of “Just Enough Architecture”.

What is Just Enough Architecture?

Just Enough Architecture is a strategic approach in software development that focuses on implementing only the essential architectural components needed to support current functionality. It emphasizes flexibility and adaptability, allowing teams to make iterative improvements and respond to changing requirements. This approach balances the need for solid architectural foundations with the agility required to deliver value quickly in dynamic environments.

The Value of Just Enough Architecture

1. Facilitating Agile Principles

Just Enough Architecture aligns perfectly with Agile principles. By avoiding the pitfalls of over-engineering, teams can focus on delivering value quickly.

Quoting again from Scaled Agile principles (? Scaled Agile, Inc.), that are the guiding forces in this case. Out of the defined 10 principles, a few of them listed below, lead us towards a certain mindset essential for Just Enough Architecture:

• Are we ensuring that each solution that we develop is tied towards Customer Value or Business Objectives? (Principle #1 — Take an economic view)
• How much effort and how long will it take to build a Gold Solution - (I must point out that a Working Solution is better than a Gold Solution)? Is there a way we can break it down to deliver smaller solution that will set us up for early value realization? (Principle# 4 — Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles)
• Are we becoming part of each and every decision that is being made part of the solution? Is there an opportunity to decentralize some of them? (Principle# 9 — Decentralize decision-making)

2. Enabling Flexibility and Adaptability

In an Agile environment, requirements often evolve. Just Enough Architecture provides a flexible framework that can adapt to these changes without extensive rework. It helps teams to implement only the essential architectural components necessary to support current functionality, making future adjustments easier and less costly.

3. Reducing Time to Market

By concentrating on the essential architectural elements, development teams can accelerate the delivery of working software. This approach ensures that resources are allocated efficiently, prioritizing features that deliver immediate business value and minimizing the time spent on non-essential components.

4. Encouraging Collaboration

Just Enough Architecture fosters a collaborative environment where developers, architects, and stakeholders work closely together. This continuous dialogue ensures that the architecture evolves in alignment with the project’s goals and customer needs, reducing misunderstandings and fostering a shared vision.

Contrasting with Big Design Up Front (BDUF)

Big Design Up Front (BDUF) represents the traditional approach to software architecture, where extensive planning and documentation occur before any development begins. While BDUF aims to foresee and mitigate risks early, it often leads to rigidity and slow response times in dynamic environments.

Key Differences:

? Flexibility vs. Rigidity: Just Enough Architecture promotes flexibility and adaptability, while BDUF can result in a rigid structure that is hard to change.

? Iterative vs. Predictive: Agile and Just Enough Architecture emphasize iterative development, allowing for continual improvement. BDUF relies on predictive planning, which can become outdated as project requirements evolve.

? Speed vs. Thoroughness: Just Enough Architecture speeds up delivery by focusing on immediate needs. In contrast, BDUF aims for thoroughness, potentially delaying initial releases.

First Steps towards Just Enough Architecture — Solution Intent

To understand that Scaled Agile also introduces a concept of Solution Intent — basically with any solution intent — you have a fixed part and a variable part.

The fixed part identifies the components that are absolutely essential for a solution to be useful for meeting any business objective. You must deliver this part of the solution. These are non-negotiable parts.

The variable part is something that has a potential of trade-offs based on cost, time and effort.

Understanding and objectively identifying the fixed and variable parts are very much essential for incorporating agile principles in the architectural outputs.

An example of this is shown below:

The clear benefits of above approaches are:

• The above method help us the business stakeholder with clarity on what is a day 1 solution and so on. The roadmap also help train their mindset on expectations and being innovative while still being able to deliver value continuously.
• When presented as a matrix that ties, the fixed and variable parts of the Solution Intent to the Business Objectives, can dramatically help us anchored and focussed towards the solution that will drive us to the quickest value.
• It allows for the implementers of the solution limit their focus towards what is really valuable for their efforts.
• Finally with clear objective and intents, the collaboration outcomes are efficiently productive.

Striking the Right Balance

Finding the right balance between Just Enough Architecture and necessary upfront design is key to project success. Here are a few strategies:

1. Architectural Sprints: We cannot undermine the need to efforts that will be required upfront by the architects to provide enough details to the team members. To be able to steer the collaboration with the stakeholder, the architectural sprints should focus greatly on the defining, identifying and refining the Solution Intent.

Once you have engaged the stakeholders on assessing your architectural requirement, it is probably a bit late on your part to extract the outcomes that you are hoping to get.

Obviously, things evolve but still pre-planning is essential and important in this. Otherwise, solution discovery process can become a set of rabbit holes.

2. Continuous Feedback Loops: Regularly review architectural decisions in light of new information and evolving requirements. Refine and iterate on the Solution Intent and its classification of Fixed and Variable parts. Finally, test each time on if the value provided to the Business objective is still there.

2. Incremental Documentation: Maintain concise, up-to-date documentation that evolves alongside the project. Just enough architecture, recommends and promotes minimal documentation. The choice of tools and methodology also plays a great role here. The ideas is not present a flashy diagram — the idea is to communicate the design just in time and just enough to the stakeholders so that they understand your views on the solution.

If we write a book on a solution, we have release a new edition everytime the solution changes. This is a big value deterrant for any project and finding a right balance is important.

4. Prototyping and Proof of Concepts: Use prototypes to validate architectural decisions before full-scale implementation, reducing the risk of costly rework.

I am a very big believer in the value of Proof of concepts. This methodology helps you understand the attributes of the requirements and its solution as quick as possible. Sometime unless you prototype a solutions, it is even harder to understand if we are solving optimally for a requirement or not. Or even, if we are solving for the right requirement or not. The list goes on and on.

Conclusion

Just Enough Architecture offers a pragmatic approach to balancing agility with sound architectural practices. By focusing on immediate needs and maintaining the flexibility to adapt, teams can deliver high-quality software that meets evolving business demands. While it requires careful planning and skilled execution, the benefits of Just Enough Architecture — reduced time to market, cost efficiency, and enhanced agility — make it an invaluable strategy in today’s dynamic software development landscape.

Embracing Just Enough Architecture means committing to a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and adaptability. It’s about doing what is necessary to achieve success today while staying prepared for the uncertainties of tomorrow.