What Are the Benefits of a Collaborative Approach to Architecture?

From the above, and to paraphrase Scott Ambler, the benefits of a collaborative approach to architecture can be summed up using these three words:

• Better. An agile architecture enables agile teams to produce better quality solutions for their stakeholders by providing a more reliable ecosystem with which to work.
• Faster. An agile architecture enables agile teams to deliver solutions to market faster due to improved reuse and infrastructure quality.
• Cheaper. An agile architecture enables agile teams to deliver solutions to their stakeholders at a lower cost due to improved reuse, greater quality, and greater platform consistency.

This is all about enhancing the Enterprise Asset. Perhaps a more succinct way of saying this is that the architect’s job is to focus on “design for deployability” based on doing the work aimed at increasing the flow of value.

These benefits need both intentional and emergent to fully leverage the combine intellect of the people doing the work.