I got asked recently about the role of architecture in agile development. Basically, the question boils down to some variation of “Is there a place for architecture in agile development?” This is a common and mostly misunderstood question. It seems like it gets asked on every project. It’s based on a faulty assumption: that architecture is something that is stand alone, that can be bolted on to a project.
To talk about agile architecture, you first need to understand what architecture is. Once you know what architecture is, and what it isn’t, the question changes to “How can you do good architecture in agile development?”