Yes!! Sending this to my team now. Still relevant several years later. Even more important now given the exponential increase in complexity of modern systems.
To watch more from ThoughtWorks at the Software Architecture Conference, check out our interview with Molly Dishman: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cNIVPsL2PMs.html
Much as I enjoy a LOT of Neal Ford observations, this agile view of Software Architecture I think is disingenuous and to an alarming degree anti-intellectual. It's also one of the rare places where I think his estimation of Computer-Aided Software Engineering tools is inaccurate. Like it or not software development and software architecture engage different styles of thinking - one that is minutiae oriented and the other abstract. Now it may be simply a case of Agile zealotry that makes it profitable to create caricatures of Software Architects as working in ivory towers and somehow being out of touch but as a Software Architect I, more often than not, encounter agile development practices that are dysfunctional (agile waterfalls) and out-of-touch with the big picture. Like wise blaming CASE tools for the misguided (but highly profitable to big name consulting firms) practice of Design Up Front Until the Money Runs Out does not mean the tools are necessarily bad nor that the tools are not worth using in dealing with the abstractions we face as Software Architects. Let me finally say that being a Software Architect is more than a full time job. The cutesy agile argument that architects MUST code is wholesale bullshit. When the time and responsibilities are such that the Software Architect has the luxury of coding, that's fine. When that doesn't exist, to beat up architects for not being in a trench while they're battling technical debt issues and righting the ship without sinking it is a bit much. Yes, everybody 'can be' interchangeable by sprinkling agile fairy dust around so that every underpaid developer is an architect too. But those underpaid developers don't have the habits of architects. making oneself indispensable by obfuscating information at the coding level is anathema (and worse) at the architecture level. We live in brittle times. Titles and roles ARE meaningful. When they are arbitrary, somebody should be very concerned.
