Dr. Dobbs published the Jolt Awards for Design, Architecture and Planning Tools today. The Jolt judges make a very important introductory point before discussing the specific winners.

“On large projects, it can be difficult to state requirements, do the design work, and still maintain Agile's orientation towards accepting — even welcoming — new changes from users.

“Those issues notwithstanding, I've noticed that most large or mid-sized projects with mission-critical implications invariably do indeed gather requirements carefully and design the product accordingly. Agile, if it's in use in the organization, typically is most evident in the coding and testing stages.

“Tools that can capture requirements, help illustrate and validate design, and plan the implementation are still very much needed.“

One of the greatest misunderstandings of Agile software development is the assumption that if one thing is valued over another, the thing with lesser value has no value. Let us review the manifesto:

Manifesto for Agile Software Development

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

I have added my own emphasis to highlight the point that is so often overlooked by Agile critics and enthusiasts alike. The critic decries Agile for eliminating design, architecture and planning, and yet Agile does nothing of the sort. The enthusiast rushes to write code thinking that Agile is a magic bridge over the need to endure the tedium of design, architecture and planning, and yet, nothing could be further from the truth.

After all, how can you set out to intelligently implement a use case if you do not first fully understand the design and architecture that supports the use case? And how will you know that you are implementing that use case at the right time without proper planning?

As the Jolt judges point out, the design, architecture and planning tools we choose to use in an Agile development shop “must be less heavy than in years past and more easily configured to fit the needs of the organization, rather than implementing a specific methodology to which the organization must migrate its orientation, if not its processes.”

I’m excited to check out the winners the judges have chosen. Visit the link at the beginning of this post and check them out yourself.

Whatever tools you choose for doing your design, architecture and planning, do not make the mistake of thinking that these critical phases of development are eliminated by Agile. You may go about these phases with a new attitude toward what is important and with a more realistic view of the realities of the evolution of a product during all phases of development, but you will not ignore them without significant risk. In fact, I think they need to be embraced by Agile teams remaining focused on the use cases and not the frameworks.