Composable Architecture & Agility

In this article, our Product Manager, Keddy Pavlik, and COO, Stephen Netzlaw, explore how composable architecture and the twelve principles derived from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development improve business agility.

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Business agility refers to the adaptive and customer-centric capability of organizations to swiftly respond to market dynamics, leverage innovation, foster collaboration, and continuously improve efficiency, ensuring competitiveness and customer satisfaction in a rapidly changing business landscape through flexible strategies, processes, operations, and digital adoption.

Agile development leverages business agility

Increase speed to implement essential changes

• Respond to customer’s needs and desires quickly
• Maintain a competitive edge through faster strategy changes

Reduce risk

• Increase transparency through regular updates and demos
• Quality assurance done by a cross-functional team
• Reduce technical debt by focusing on code quality

Increase the value of your investment

• Adjust scope when business needs to change
• Reduce time creating artifacts

Engaged team members

• Integration of multiple skill sets, promoting more comprehensive and holistic execution and review.
• Short-release cycles mean chunks of smaller, more manageable work
• Self-organizing teams allow team members to be at their most creative and independent to create the best solutions
• By comparing the principles of Agile and how composable architecture supports them, we can identify the business agility benefits of adopting this robust methodology and a modern technical setup.

The 12 Principles of Agile and how composable architecture support them

Reduced risk

• Agile principle — Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.
• Composable architecture benefit — Composable architecture supports microservices, which can reduce the risk of site outages. 
• Business agility outcome — With a composable architecture setup, continuous delivery becomes easier and only impacts portions of the site instead of the entire system. It equals less (or no) downtime and no regression testing required.

Embrace change management

• Agile principle — Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.
• Composable architecture benefit — If requirements change, a composable architecture allows you to pivot into a new integration without having to redo your tech stack completely.
• Business agility outcome — Depending on the changes you may need to make with your site, you can choose the pieces of the architecture to suit your needs best.

Strategic cadences

• Agile principle — Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference for a shorter timescale.
• Composable architecture benefit — Composable architecture allows you to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and then iteratively add features to improve the MVP.
• Business agility outcome — Improved time to value means you can get the base functionality up quickly and then add features bit by bit, incorporating agility as you build.

Cross-functional teams

• Agile principle — Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.
• Composable architecture benefit — In each piece of composable architecture, there is likely to be a corresponding business person to be a subject matter expert (SME). 
• Business agility outcome — The pieces in a composable architecture allow specialists to engage where needed, so a single person isn't relied upon to know everything about the site. 

Engaged team members

• Agile principle — Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to do the job.
• Composable architecture benefit — Choosing the best pieces for each job allows the best solution to arise, which means the right tools for people to do their jobs.
• Business agility outcome — Improves employee and stakeholder buy-in, which removes friction to change.

Healthy dialogue

• Agile principle — Face-to-face conversation is the most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team.
• Composable architecture benefit — This is less relevant to composable architecture. But it certainly doesn’t hurt it! 
• Business agility outcome — Improving communication and collaboration will benefit most, if not all, of the tenets of business agility.

Iterative improvement

• Agile principle — Working software is the primary measure of progress.
• Composable architecture benefit — To have a working site, you don’t have to have every piece at 100% before you can launch! Specific verticals can be created and launched independently with composable. 
• Business agility outcome — Agile methodologies and composable architecture allow for improved time-to-market for new sales channels.

Continuous performance

• Agile principle — Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
• Composable architecture benefit — Composable reduces the risk of massive systemic crashes or bugs because pieces run independently. If problems do arise, they will be smaller and more straightforward to fix, allowing the pace of development to be consistent. 
• Business agility outcome — Continuous improvement leads to continuous growth and scalability.

Sense and respond

• Agile principle — Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.
• Composable architecture benefit — With composable, you have no choice but to constantly pay attention to the architectural structure and its design so you can modify it more easily when needed!
• Business agility outcome — Adapting to business changes proactively is more effective than a reactive strategy.

Solution efficiency

• Agile principle — Simplicity, the art of maximizing the amount of work not done, is essential.
• Composable architecture benefit — With composable architecture, select only the pieces you need – avoid being stuck with a monolithic stack which includes functionality that only bogs you down.
• Business agility outcome — Realize the cost-effectiveness of not paying for services and features you do not need.

Allow self-organization

• Agile principle — The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.
• Composable architecture benefit — A self-organizing team will have a much easier time when they can play within the flexibility of a composable architecture.
• Business agility outcome — The nexus of best-of-breed, best-of-need and technical expertise ensures 

Retrospective

• Agile principle — At regular intervals, the team reflects on becoming more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.
• Composable architecture benefit — If, upon reflection, the team agrees something isn’t working, a composable architecture makes it easier and faster to respond with the necessary changes. Any changes will only affect certain parts of the site, not the entire thing. 
• Business agility outcome — Taking the time to look back means process improvements that ensure the path forward is roadblock free.

Will composable work for your business?

Ready to explore a composable architecture backed by Agile methodology?  Start by taking our Ideal Architecture Analysis to determine if a modern technical setup will help you reach your business goals.