A framework for architecture-centric practices integration into agile software development [APIASD]

The need for having a clear roadmap for a software product developed using an agile method is a reasonable implication of the agilists’ tendency of establishing a planning-driven process rather than a plan-driven one, and chasing and welcoming change rather than limiting it. Building an initial architecture for a product will serve as the railway for a planning process that can enable managing change accommodation rather than unmanaged change accommodation. Change accommodation –while not considering the proposed changes’ effectsmay serve its purpose of flexibility on the short term, but on the long term will uncover a complex, unmanageable set of relations between software components within an eroded architecture. In this paper, a framework for embedding architectural practices into an agile software development process –while avoiding problems of current agile architecting, and keeping agile development valuesis presented.