Big front-end designs are bad, because they do not match the reality. The devils are really in the details. However, the cost of changes is considered too high and the illusion of predictability makes us close our eyes on reality.
In Scrum we say that we should focus on infrastructure and architecture in the first Sprints. Decisions about our software development environment, tools and architectures are not easily reversible. The situation is much worse in the construction business. If we are building a bridge or a tower of Eiffel we can’t start it again from the beginning if the base is not strong enough.
The case is not that bad in software development. We use software instead of electronic circuits just because it is easier to change software than hardware.We need to have appropriate engineering practices to change Kent Beck’s famous cost curve. Extreme programming contains many practices that are needed to make the code easy to change. In addition to these we need solid architectural principles and rigorous attitude to quality.PowerPoint architectures outlined at the first Sprints are not good enough. We need executable architectures and extensive testing with highest priory business functionality to make sure that the quality attributes, non-functional requirements, are OK, before we continue deeper.We don’t stop to that. We require that the architectures are easy to change. Ease of refactoring and testing can be achieved with known design patterns.
My colleague has written a provocative blog entry about the current situation of agility.Actually, we are promoting our new course: Agile Engineering Practices, which can be used as a part of Certified Scrum Developer curriculum.