Architecture Options Roadmap

This post is part of 101 ideas for agile teams.

There are several ways to the destination.

Context

Your team struggles to plan and visualize the tasks regarding the architecture of the software system to be built.

There is no big picture of the architectural steps involved and the options available.

Action

Create an architectural roadmap of the system to be built.

Example of an architecture roadmap (details however left out because of size)

The roadmap shows the steps (green in the example above) involved with possible routes (blue arrows in the example above).

If a step has several options, they are shown (yellow), too.

Note that the example does only show a few options because the size of a real roadmap would be too big for a post.

What you gain

A visualization of the big picture of the architectural work showing progress and possible future options.

You can use the roadmap as the base for discussions about architectural work in your team.

How to strengthen

Update the roadmap frequently to let it reflect the current state of progress and knowledge. You can use different colors for steps that are done, in progress or upcoming.

Risks

The architecture roadmap is a visualization of current knowledge. Make sure that it is updated when the team builds up more knowledge. Do not blindly follow the roadmap.

Links

Architecture Cheat Sheet listing all the things to take into consideration when designing an architecture.

Please help me improve this idea by providing feedback.

More ideas at 101 ideas for agile teams

Many thanks to bbv Software Services for making this blog post possible.