Is it really Agile vs. Architecture?

Just read this article at IDG.se. First off the article itself doesn't really say that much... what's the message that the journalist at IDG want to try to get across? People have different opinions?

Though after reading it I start to contemplate a bit... personally I don't see a conflict between the ideas conveyed through the agile manifesto and the purpose of the "discipline" we call software and/or system architecture. I can understand that there are probably individuals that perceive themselves as part of either "community" and that their "corner" is better in some way...

But that says much more about these individuals than anything else.

I also agree that architects can be rigid and inflexible, that they can be "waterfally" etc... but that that says more about their performance and the environment they operate in. I wouldn't call them good architects... or maybe they are but got their hands tied down by the major cooperation process X.

The quote from the Microsoft guy is peculiar (if he really said it, you never know with an online-paper) and I have heard it before and didn't agree to it then either... there is nothing in the agile manifesto stating anything about architecture more than the following (from the subsection “12 principles for agile software”) "The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams." Ok, maybe we should take "emerge" literally but personally I don't.

The notion that "agile" mean that architecture should be built bottom-up is just one example of TGW when agile becomes Agile and people start to attach methods/processes/etc stating that this is the way to do it... Maybe bottom-up is ok for some scenarios but I can guarantee that I can find a scenario where initial envisioning of structure etc is absolutely a must. The point with agile from my perspective is that we should go with whatever fits our needs the best. Coming from the embedded world and large distributed systems I can’t really see a bottom-up approach as appropriate… that said the extreme top-heavy top-down approach isn’t good either.

Though I do like that the article concludes that agile and architecture should come together, for me it already is.