Abstract
Context: Even though Scrum (the most popular agile software development approach) does not consider architecting an explicit activity, research and professional literature provide insights into how to approach architecting in agile development projects. However, challenges faced by architects in Scrum when performing tasks relevant to the architects’ role are still unexplored. Objective: We aim at identifying challenges that architects face in Scrum and how they tackle them. Method: We conducted a case study involving interviews with architects from six Dutch companies. Results: Challenges faced by architects are mostly related to the autonomy of development teams and expected competences of Product Owners. Conclusions: The results presented in this paper help architects understand potential pitfalls that might occur in Scrum and what they can do to mitigate or to avoid them.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
VersionOne: 9th Annual State of Agile Survey (2015)
Bass, L., Clements, P., Kazman, R.: Software Architecture in Practice. Addison-Wesley Professional, Boston (2012)
Abrahamsson, P., Babar, M.A., Kruchten, P.: Agility and architecture: can they coexist? IEEE Softw. 27, 16–22 (2010)
Yang, C., Liang, P., Avgeriou, P.: A systematic mapping study on the combination of software architecture and agile development. J. Syst. Softw. 111, 157–184 (2016)
Babar, M.A.: An exploratory study of architectural practices and challenges in using agile software development approaches. In: Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, 2009 and European Conference on Software Architecture, WICSA/ECSA 2009, pp. 81–90 (2009)
van der Ven, J.S., Bosch, J.: Architecture decisions: who, how, and when? In: Babar, M.A., Brown, A.W., Mistrik, I. (eds.) Agile Software Architecture, chap. 5, pp. 113–136. Morgan Kaufmann, Boston (2014)
Faber, R.: Architects as service providers. IEEE Softw. 27, 33–40 (2010)
Woods, E.: Aligning architecture work with agile teams. IEEE Softw. 32, 24–26 (2015)
Martini, A., Pareto, L., Bosch, J.: Towards introducing agile architecting in large companies: the CAFFEA framework. In: Lassenius, C., Dingsøyr, T., Paasivaara, M. (eds.) XP 2015. LNBIP, vol. 212, pp. 218–223. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-18612-2_20
Eloranta, V.-P., Koskimies, K.: Lightweight architecture knowledge management for agile software development. In: Babar, M.A., Brown, A.W., Mistrik, I. (eds.) Agile Software Architecture, chap. 8, pp. 189–213. Morgan Kaufmann, Boston (2014)
Rost, D., Weitzel, B., Naab, M., Lenhart, T., Schmitt, H.: Distilling best practices for agile development from architecture methodology. In: Weyns, D., Mirandola, R., Crnkovic, I. (eds.) ECSA 2015. LNCS, vol. 9278, pp. 259–267. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). doi:10.1007/978-3-319-23727-5_21
Schwaber, K., Beedle, M.: Agile Software Development with Scrum. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (2002)
Beck, K.: Extreme Programming Explained (1999)
Fowler, M.: Who needs an architect? IEEE Softw. 20, 11–13 (2003)
Runeson, P., Höst, M.: Guidelines for conducting and reporting case study research in software engineering. Empirical Softw. Eng. 14, 131–164 (2008)
Wohlin, C., Runeson, P., Höst, M., Ohlsson, M.C., Regnell, B., Wesslén, A.: Experimentation in Software Engineering. Springer, Heidelberg (2012)
Kitchenham, B., Pfleeger, S.L.: Principles of survey research: part 5: populations and samples. SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes 27, 17–20 (2002)
Kruchten, P.: What do software architects really do? J. Syst. Softw. 81(12), 2413–2416 (2008)
Miles, M., Huberman, M., Saldana, J.: Qualitative Data Analysis. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks (2014)
Krippendorff, K.: Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks (2003)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Angelov, S., Meesters, M., Galster, M. (2016). Architects in Scrum: What Challenges Do They Face?. In: Tekinerdogan, B., Zdun, U., Babar, A. (eds) Software Architecture. ECSA 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9839. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48992-6_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-48992-6_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-48991-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-48992-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)