1. Collaborative Design and Technical Leadership:
Work closely with Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and development teams to guide architectural decisions.
Lead by example and collaborate, rather than dictate; architecture emerges with input from the team.
Promote evolutionary architecture—one that grows iteratively with the system.
2. Define and Communicate Architecture Vision:
Create and maintain an architectural vision that aligns with business goals and Agile values.
Ensure that architecture supports non-functional requirements (NFRs) such as scalability, security, and performance.
Clearly articulate trade-offs and technical direction to stakeholders and teams.
3. Enable Decentralized Decision-Making:
Empower development teams by setting guardrails and guidelines, rather than controlling every decision.
Encourage self-organization and local design autonomy within a larger architectural context.
Foster Technical Excellence
Drive best practices in code quality, design patterns, refactoring, and testing.
Promote technical excellence through mentoring, code reviews, and pair programming when appropriate.
4. Support Agile Planning Events:
Participate in key Agile ceremonies such as:
Backlog Refinement –to ensure architectural concerns are considered early.
Sprint Planning –to guide technical feasibility.
PI Planning (in SAFe) –to align architecture with program-level goals.
System Demos and I&A –to ensure the architecture supports integrated solutions.
5. Manage Technical Risk and Debt:
Identify and address technical risks and architectural debt proactively.
Continuously evaluate the architecture’s effectiveness in light of changing requirements.
6. Support DevOps and Continuous Delivery:
Guide teams in integrating CI/CD practices, automated testing, and release pipelines.
Help design systems that are deployable, monitorable, and recoverable.
Align with Enterprise Architecture (if applicable)
In larger organizations or frameworks like SAFe, Agile Architects (System, Solution, Enterprise) align team-level architecture with enterprise-wide standards.