THE ROLE OF AGILE SOFTWARE ARCHITECT IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL DISRUPTION AND TRANSFORMATION
Zoran Dragičević
Kompanija Boksit a.d. Milići, RS, Bosnia & Herzegovina
Saša Bošnjak
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Economics in Subotica, Serbia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/Balkans.JETSS.2020.3.2.148-162
Zoran Dragičević
Kompanija Boksit a.d. Milići, RS, Bosnia & Herzegovina
Saša Bošnjak
University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Economics in Subotica, Serbia
DOI: https://doi.org/10.31410/Balkans.JETSS.2020.3.2.148-162
Balkans Journal of Emerging Trends in Social Sciences, (2020) , Vol 3, No 2
ISSN: 2620-164X
ISSN: 2620-164X
Abstract: The consequence of the increasing development and use of digital technologies, in every segment of society, is the emergence of digital disruption - a powerful external pressure that is changing the way business is done in all industries. Businesses are responding to digital disruption by digital transformation, which involves organizational change, redefining and aligning digital and business strategies, new business models, increased agility of software development and delivery processes, migration and/or integration of legacy systems using cloud-based platforms and ecosystems. In such a context, one of the key responsibilities of a software architect is to maintain the agility of the organization by defending the flexibility of digital strategy and IT resources so that the enterprise is able to transform and respond adequately and rapidly to the effects of digital disruption. In this regard, the question arises as to how digital disruption and business transformation affect the change in the role, importance, competence and agility of a software architect, especially in the context of the development of complex business software systems. This paper aims to present the role of an agile software architect in the era of digital disruption and transformation, by integrating the results of theoretical and empirical research. A systematic literature review identifies the role, importance, and competencies of a software architect in implementing agile architecture. In other hand, empirical research, based on a case study in a large enterprise, provides a better understanding of the importance of software architect for aligning business and digital strategy, as well as its contribution to increasing the agility of the process of developing, delivering and integrating complex business software systems.
Keywords: Agility, Agile software architect, Digital disruption, Digital transformation.
JEL Classifications L86
REFERENCES
Babar, M. A. (2009) ‘An exploratory study of architectural practices and challenges in using agile
software development approaches’, in 2009 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software
Architecture & European Conference on Software Architecture, pp. 81–90.
Baiyere, A. & Hukal, P. (2020) ‘Digital Disruption: A Conceptual Clarification’, Proceedings of
the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3, pp. 5482–5491.
Bass, J. M. (2019) ‘Agile on a Large Scale’, Itnow, 61(1), pp. 56–57.
Bass, L. (2017) ‘The Software Architect and DevOps’, IEEE Software, 35(1), pp. 8–10.
Berman, S. J. (2012) ‘Digital transformation: Opportunities to create new business models’, Strategy
and Leadership, 40(2), pp. 16–24.
Blair, S., Watt, R. & Cull, T. (2010) ‘Responsibility-driven architecture’, IEEE Software, 27(2),
pp. 26–32.
Britto, R., Šmite, D. & Damm, L. O. (2016) ‘Software Architects in Large-Scale Distributed Projects:
An Ericsson Case Study’, IEEE Software, 33(6), pp. 48–55.
Buschmann, F. (2012) ‘A week in the life of an architect’, IEEE Software, 29(3), pp. 94–96.
Buschmann, F. & Henney, K. (2013) ‘Architecture and agility: Married, divorced, or just good
friends?’, IEEE Software, 30(2), pp. 80–82.
Dragičević, Z. & Bošnjak, S. (2019a) ‘Agile architecture in the digital era: Trends and practices’,
Strategic Management, 24(2), pp. 12–33.
Dragičević, Z. & Bošnjak, S. (2019b) ‘Digital transformation in the mining enterprise: The empirical
study’, Mining and Metallurgy Engineering Bor, (1–2), pp. 73–90.
Dragičević, Z. & Bošnjak, S. (2019c) ‘Harmonizing business and digital enterprise strategy using
SOA middle-out and service-based approach’, Journal of Engineering Management and
Competitiveness (JEMC), 9(2), pp. 97–112.
Durdik, Z. (2011) ‘Towards a process for architectural modelling in agile software development’,
in Proceedings of the joint ACM SIGSOFT conference -- QoSA and ACM SIGSOFT symposium
-- ISARCS on Quality of software architectures -- QoSA and architecting critical
systems -- ISARCS - QoSA-ISARCS ’11, pp. 183–192.
Dybå, T. & Dingsøyr, T. (2008) ‘Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic
review’, Information and Software Technology, 50(9–10), pp. 833–859.
Eisenhardt, K. M. & Graebner, M. E. (2007) ‘Theory Building from Cases: Opportunities and
Challenges’, The Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), pp. 25–32.
Erder, M. & Pureur, P. (2016) ‘What’s the Architect’s Role in an Agile, Cloud-Centric World?’,
IEEE Software, 33(5), pp. 30–33.
Faber, R. (2010) ‘Architects as service providers’, IEEE Software, 27(2), pp. 33–40.
Gerdes, S., Jasser, S., Riebisch, M., Schröder, S., Soliman, M., et al. (2016) ‘Towards the essentials
of architecture documentation for avoiding architecture erosion’, Proceedings of the 10th
European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops - ECSAW ’16, pp. 1–4.
Hadar, I. & Sherman, S. (2012) ‘Agile vs. plan-driven perceptions of software architecture’, 2012
5th International Workshop on Co-operative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering,
CHASE 2012 - Proceedings, pp. 50–55.
Hohpe, G., Ozkaya, I., Zdun, U. & Zimmermann, O. (2016) ‘The Software Architect’s Role in the
Digital Age’, IEEE Software, 33(6), pp. 30–39.
Holmes, B. & Nicolaescu, A. (2017) ‘Continuous Architecting: Just another buzzword?’, in Fullscale
Software Engineering/The Art of Software Testing, pp. 1–6.
Jalali, S. & Wohlin, C. (2012) ‘Systematic Literature Studies: Database Searches vs. Backward
Snowballing’, in ESEM’12: Proceedings of the ACM-IEEE International Symposium on
Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, pp. 29–38.
Kitchenham, B. (2007) ‘Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software
Engineering’.
Kruchten, P. (2019) ‘The End of Agile as We Know It’, in IEEE/ACM International Conference on
Software and System Processes (ICSSP). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE), pp. 104–104.
Larrucea, X., Santamaria, I., Colomo-Palacios, R. & Ebert, C. (2018) ‘Microservices’, IEEE Software,
35(3), pp. 96–100.
Liere-Netheler, K., Vogelsang, K., Packmohr, S. & Hoppe, U. (2018) ‘Towards a Framework for
Digital Transformation Success in Manufacturing’, 26th European Conference on Information
Systems (ECIS 2018), (Schwab 2017), pp. 1–19.
Madison, J. (2010) ‘Agile–Architecture Interactions’, IEEE Software, 27(2), pp. 41–48.
Marić, M. & Tumbas, P. (2016) ‘The role of the software architect in agile development processes’,
Strategic Management, 21(1), pp. 16–22.
Martensson, T., Stahl, D., Martini, A. & Bosch, J. (2019) ‘Continuous architecture: Towards the
goldilocks zone and away from vicious circles’, Proceedings - 2019 IEEE International
Conference on Software Architecture, ICSA 2019. IEEE, pp. 131–140.
Martini, A. & Bosch, J. (2016) ‘A multiple case study of continuous architecting in large agile
companies: current gaps and the CAFFEA framework’, Proceedings - 2016 13th Working
IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, WICSA 2016, pp. 1–10.
McQuivey, J. (2013) Digital disruption: Unleashing the next wave of innovation. Forrester Research.
Mirakhorli, M. & Cleland-Huang, J. (2013) ‘Traversing the twin peaks’, IEEE Software, 30(2),
pp. 30–36.
Nord, R. L., Ozkaya, I. & Kruchten, P. (2014) ‘Agile in Distress: Architecture to the Rescue’, in
International Conference on Agile Software Development, pp. 43–57.
O’Connor, R. V. O., Elger, P. & Clarke, P. M. (2016) ‘Exploring the impact of situational context
– A case study of a software development process for a microservices architecture’, in 2016
IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP), pp. 6–10.
Ozkaya, I. (2019) ‘Are DevOps and Automation Our Next Silver Bullet?’, IEEE Software. IEEE,
36(4), pp. 3–95.
Pautasso, C., Zimmermann, O., Amundsen, M., Lewis, J. & Josuttis, N. (2017a) ‘Microservices
in Practice, Part 1: Reality Check and Service Design’, IEEE Software, 34(1), pp. 91–98.
Pautasso, C., Zimmermann, O., Amundsen, M., Lewis, J. & Josuttis, N. (2017b) ‘Microservices in
Practice, Part 2: Service Integration and Sustainability’, IEEE Software, 34(2), pp. 97–104.
Poort, E. (2014) ‘Driving agile architecting with cost and risk’, IEEE Software, 31(5), pp. 20–23.
Poort, E. (2016) ‘Just Enough Anticipation: Architect Your Time Dimension’, IEEE Software,
(December), pp. 11–15.
Prause, C. R. & Durdik, Z. (2012) ‘Architectural design and documentation: Waste in agile development?’,
2012 International Conference on Software and System Process, ICSSP 2012
- Proceedings, pp. 130–134.
Prikladnicki, R., Lassenius, C. & Carver, J. C. (2017) ‘Trends in Agile Updated: Perspectives
from the Practitioners’, IEEE Software, 35(1), pp. 109–111.
Shahin, M., Zahedi, M., Babar, M. A. & Zhu, L. (2019) ‘An empirical study of architecting for continuous
delivery and deployment’, Empirical Software Engineering, 24(3), pp. 1061–1108.
Skog, D. A., Wimelius, H. & Sandberg, J. (2018) ‘Digital Disruption’, Business and Information
Systems Engineering. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 60(5), pp. 431–437. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-018-0550-4.
Sturtevant, D. (2017) ‘Modular Architectures Make You Agile in the Long Run’, IEEE Software,
35(1), pp. 104–108.
Waterman, M. (2018a) ‘Agility, risk, and uncertainty, part 1: Designing an agile architecture’,
IEEE Software, 35(2), pp. 99–101.
Waterman, M. (2018b) ‘Agility, Risk, and Uncertainty, Part 2: How Risk Impacts Agile Architecture’,
IEEE Software, 35(3), pp. 18–19.
Webster, J. & Watson, R. T. (2002) ‘Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature
Review’, Source: MIS Quarterly, 26(2).
Westerman, G., Calméjane, C., Bonnet, D., Ferraris, P. & McAfee, A. (2011) ‘Digital transformation:
a roadmap for billion-dollar organizations’, MIT Center for Digital Business and
Capgemini Consulting, pp. 1–68.
Woods, E. (2015) ‘Aligning Architecture Work with Agile Teams’, IEEE Software, 32(5), pp.
24–26.
Woods, E. (2016) ‘Software Architecture in a Changing World’, IEEE Software, 33(6), pp. 94–97.
Zimmermann, O. (2016) ‘Designed and Delivered Today, Eroded Tomorrow? Towards an Open
and Lean Architecting Framework Balancing Agility and Sustainability’, in Proceedings of
the 10th European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops, p. 7.
Keywords: Agility, Agile software architect, Digital disruption, Digital transformation.
JEL Classifications L86
REFERENCES
Babar, M. A. (2009) ‘An exploratory study of architectural practices and challenges in using agile
software development approaches’, in 2009 Joint Working IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software
Architecture & European Conference on Software Architecture, pp. 81–90.
Baiyere, A. & Hukal, P. (2020) ‘Digital Disruption: A Conceptual Clarification’, Proceedings of
the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3, pp. 5482–5491.
Bass, J. M. (2019) ‘Agile on a Large Scale’, Itnow, 61(1), pp. 56–57.
Bass, L. (2017) ‘The Software Architect and DevOps’, IEEE Software, 35(1), pp. 8–10.
Berman, S. J. (2012) ‘Digital transformation: Opportunities to create new business models’, Strategy
and Leadership, 40(2), pp. 16–24.
Blair, S., Watt, R. & Cull, T. (2010) ‘Responsibility-driven architecture’, IEEE Software, 27(2),
pp. 26–32.
Britto, R., Šmite, D. & Damm, L. O. (2016) ‘Software Architects in Large-Scale Distributed Projects:
An Ericsson Case Study’, IEEE Software, 33(6), pp. 48–55.
Buschmann, F. (2012) ‘A week in the life of an architect’, IEEE Software, 29(3), pp. 94–96.
Buschmann, F. & Henney, K. (2013) ‘Architecture and agility: Married, divorced, or just good
friends?’, IEEE Software, 30(2), pp. 80–82.
Dragičević, Z. & Bošnjak, S. (2019a) ‘Agile architecture in the digital era: Trends and practices’,
Strategic Management, 24(2), pp. 12–33.
Dragičević, Z. & Bošnjak, S. (2019b) ‘Digital transformation in the mining enterprise: The empirical
study’, Mining and Metallurgy Engineering Bor, (1–2), pp. 73–90.
Dragičević, Z. & Bošnjak, S. (2019c) ‘Harmonizing business and digital enterprise strategy using
SOA middle-out and service-based approach’, Journal of Engineering Management and
Competitiveness (JEMC), 9(2), pp. 97–112.
Durdik, Z. (2011) ‘Towards a process for architectural modelling in agile software development’,
in Proceedings of the joint ACM SIGSOFT conference -- QoSA and ACM SIGSOFT symposium
-- ISARCS on Quality of software architectures -- QoSA and architecting critical
systems -- ISARCS - QoSA-ISARCS ’11, pp. 183–192.
Dybå, T. & Dingsøyr, T. (2008) ‘Empirical studies of agile software development: A systematic
review’, Information and Software Technology, 50(9–10), pp. 833–859.
Eisenhardt, K. M. & Graebner, M. E. (2007) ‘Theory Building from Cases: Opportunities and
Challenges’, The Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), pp. 25–32.
Erder, M. & Pureur, P. (2016) ‘What’s the Architect’s Role in an Agile, Cloud-Centric World?’,
IEEE Software, 33(5), pp. 30–33.
Faber, R. (2010) ‘Architects as service providers’, IEEE Software, 27(2), pp. 33–40.
Gerdes, S., Jasser, S., Riebisch, M., Schröder, S., Soliman, M., et al. (2016) ‘Towards the essentials
of architecture documentation for avoiding architecture erosion’, Proceedings of the 10th
European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops - ECSAW ’16, pp. 1–4.
Hadar, I. & Sherman, S. (2012) ‘Agile vs. plan-driven perceptions of software architecture’, 2012
5th International Workshop on Co-operative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering,
CHASE 2012 - Proceedings, pp. 50–55.
Hohpe, G., Ozkaya, I., Zdun, U. & Zimmermann, O. (2016) ‘The Software Architect’s Role in the
Digital Age’, IEEE Software, 33(6), pp. 30–39.
Holmes, B. & Nicolaescu, A. (2017) ‘Continuous Architecting: Just another buzzword?’, in Fullscale
Software Engineering/The Art of Software Testing, pp. 1–6.
Jalali, S. & Wohlin, C. (2012) ‘Systematic Literature Studies: Database Searches vs. Backward
Snowballing’, in ESEM’12: Proceedings of the ACM-IEEE International Symposium on
Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement, pp. 29–38.
Kitchenham, B. (2007) ‘Guidelines for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in Software
Engineering’.
Kruchten, P. (2019) ‘The End of Agile as We Know It’, in IEEE/ACM International Conference on
Software and System Processes (ICSSP). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(IEEE), pp. 104–104.
Larrucea, X., Santamaria, I., Colomo-Palacios, R. & Ebert, C. (2018) ‘Microservices’, IEEE Software,
35(3), pp. 96–100.
Liere-Netheler, K., Vogelsang, K., Packmohr, S. & Hoppe, U. (2018) ‘Towards a Framework for
Digital Transformation Success in Manufacturing’, 26th European Conference on Information
Systems (ECIS 2018), (Schwab 2017), pp. 1–19.
Madison, J. (2010) ‘Agile–Architecture Interactions’, IEEE Software, 27(2), pp. 41–48.
Marić, M. & Tumbas, P. (2016) ‘The role of the software architect in agile development processes’,
Strategic Management, 21(1), pp. 16–22.
Martensson, T., Stahl, D., Martini, A. & Bosch, J. (2019) ‘Continuous architecture: Towards the
goldilocks zone and away from vicious circles’, Proceedings - 2019 IEEE International
Conference on Software Architecture, ICSA 2019. IEEE, pp. 131–140.
Martini, A. & Bosch, J. (2016) ‘A multiple case study of continuous architecting in large agile
companies: current gaps and the CAFFEA framework’, Proceedings - 2016 13th Working
IEEE/IFIP Conference on Software Architecture, WICSA 2016, pp. 1–10.
McQuivey, J. (2013) Digital disruption: Unleashing the next wave of innovation. Forrester Research.
Mirakhorli, M. & Cleland-Huang, J. (2013) ‘Traversing the twin peaks’, IEEE Software, 30(2),
pp. 30–36.
Nord, R. L., Ozkaya, I. & Kruchten, P. (2014) ‘Agile in Distress: Architecture to the Rescue’, in
International Conference on Agile Software Development, pp. 43–57.
O’Connor, R. V. O., Elger, P. & Clarke, P. M. (2016) ‘Exploring the impact of situational context
– A case study of a software development process for a microservices architecture’, in 2016
IEEE/ACM International Conference on Software and System Processes (ICSSP), pp. 6–10.
Ozkaya, I. (2019) ‘Are DevOps and Automation Our Next Silver Bullet?’, IEEE Software. IEEE,
36(4), pp. 3–95.
Pautasso, C., Zimmermann, O., Amundsen, M., Lewis, J. & Josuttis, N. (2017a) ‘Microservices
in Practice, Part 1: Reality Check and Service Design’, IEEE Software, 34(1), pp. 91–98.
Pautasso, C., Zimmermann, O., Amundsen, M., Lewis, J. & Josuttis, N. (2017b) ‘Microservices in
Practice, Part 2: Service Integration and Sustainability’, IEEE Software, 34(2), pp. 97–104.
Poort, E. (2014) ‘Driving agile architecting with cost and risk’, IEEE Software, 31(5), pp. 20–23.
Poort, E. (2016) ‘Just Enough Anticipation: Architect Your Time Dimension’, IEEE Software,
(December), pp. 11–15.
Prause, C. R. & Durdik, Z. (2012) ‘Architectural design and documentation: Waste in agile development?’,
2012 International Conference on Software and System Process, ICSSP 2012
- Proceedings, pp. 130–134.
Prikladnicki, R., Lassenius, C. & Carver, J. C. (2017) ‘Trends in Agile Updated: Perspectives
from the Practitioners’, IEEE Software, 35(1), pp. 109–111.
Shahin, M., Zahedi, M., Babar, M. A. & Zhu, L. (2019) ‘An empirical study of architecting for continuous
delivery and deployment’, Empirical Software Engineering, 24(3), pp. 1061–1108.
Skog, D. A., Wimelius, H. & Sandberg, J. (2018) ‘Digital Disruption’, Business and Information
Systems Engineering. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden, 60(5), pp. 431–437. Available at:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-018-0550-4.
Sturtevant, D. (2017) ‘Modular Architectures Make You Agile in the Long Run’, IEEE Software,
35(1), pp. 104–108.
Waterman, M. (2018a) ‘Agility, risk, and uncertainty, part 1: Designing an agile architecture’,
IEEE Software, 35(2), pp. 99–101.
Waterman, M. (2018b) ‘Agility, Risk, and Uncertainty, Part 2: How Risk Impacts Agile Architecture’,
IEEE Software, 35(3), pp. 18–19.
Webster, J. & Watson, R. T. (2002) ‘Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature
Review’, Source: MIS Quarterly, 26(2).
Westerman, G., Calméjane, C., Bonnet, D., Ferraris, P. & McAfee, A. (2011) ‘Digital transformation:
a roadmap for billion-dollar organizations’, MIT Center for Digital Business and
Capgemini Consulting, pp. 1–68.
Woods, E. (2015) ‘Aligning Architecture Work with Agile Teams’, IEEE Software, 32(5), pp.
24–26.
Woods, E. (2016) ‘Software Architecture in a Changing World’, IEEE Software, 33(6), pp. 94–97.
Zimmermann, O. (2016) ‘Designed and Delivered Today, Eroded Tomorrow? Towards an Open
and Lean Architecting Framework Balancing Agility and Sustainability’, in Proceedings of
the 10th European Conference on Software Architecture Workshops, p. 7.
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