The Story of a Kite

Here is another short story that will attempt to provide some context on the value that Architecture provides to the organizations and the multitude of projects that tend to contest its value.

It was a sunny and slightly windy afternoon. The kite was flying high, but it was far from happy. The heights it had reached were not enough.

“When I look at the vast sky around me, I feel so constrained. This whole string and the moves made by the kite flyer are restricting me. I feel so much of my potential is being wasted,” the kite kept thinking while it was high up in the air, watching the kite flyer moving the string in different directions, shortening, and lengthening it using the spool.

“If only my wishes were heard, I would want to fly freely and reach greater heights.”

Then suddenly, all its wishes come true. The kite flyer, while letting the string become longer and longer, forgot the end was tied to the spool. Off went the kite, freely in the sky without constraints. The freedom was fantastic, but suddenly it started to feel the external forces and gravity pulling it down. In a matter of moments, it was falling and found itself stuck on a tree branch.

This story aims to provide insights into the value of Architecture and why it shouldn’t be challenged for value in an agile organization. I have been working in purely agile projects since 2016. So, in these 8 years, I have seen numerous applications of Agile methodology with different organizational flavours.

In these 8 years, I have also seen a trend where everything from the value of Architecture being challenged, just retaining Architecture to support delivery (in TOGAF’s terminology?—?“Jumping to Phase G”) to bring architecture functions back at the strategy level. It has come a full circle.?

Coming back to the story, the kite symbolizes the project or change agent. The string is the constraints and scaffolding and the hands of the kite flyer is Architecture. The kite flyer’s brain is the business. The direction in which the kite flies is defined by the business who tells the Architects of the direction in which the kite needs to fly and how fast/slow and high/low the kite should fly.

Thinking in these lines, you will understand the constraints are not always bad. The constraints are meant to bring back the changes to the value it delivers to the business.

Let’s extrapolate the example of the kite to the real-life situation. Imagine there are 100s of kites to be flown by multi-handed kite flyer (the business).

Do you think the business will be able to manage all the projects without the right constraints and limits in place?

This is where the value of Architecture is. Architects are the guiding forces in any organization where a framework is required for the changes to continue to be driven in the right direction in the optimal speed and continue to provide value.

The Open Group’s Digital Practitioner Book of Knowledge (DPBoK) categorises organizations in four categories?—?Individual / Founder, Team, Team of Teams and Enduring Enterprise. Each category has different requirements of architecture.?

Another aspect to note here is that for the categories - Individual / Founder and Team, architecture is a role to support the experimental nature of the organization and a viable product build is of utmost importance. The size and budgetary constraints of the team may not allow for a full time Architect but architecture is still required to support delivery and agility of the organization.

As the size and scope of the teams grow, the necessity and importance of an architect also grows. The Team of Teams and Enduring Enterprise allow for a full time architect’s position. The architecture scope increases from supporting products and agile delivery to other aspects such as supporting risk management, increasing team communications and helping the organizational strategy.

To sum up, whether in a full time role or a function within a team, architecture is an important function and is required to guide effective change in the organization. This function should be a change champion according to the stage the organization is in and provide conducive measures for the organization to implement its strategy based on its current vision.

Finally, architecture as a function should try its best not to become a bottleneck in the growth path of the organization and provide value via each and every outcome directed towards business goals. This is the only way any agile organization will not question its value rather will start partnering for all its vision.

Thank you for reading my post.