During a second track (see first one here), Philippe Kruchten discussed the coexistence of Agility and Architecture.

He did not publish his slides but one can find a special issue of IEEE software on “Agility and Architecture” that is worth reading and close to what was discussed in Grenoble.

To sum it up, Kruchten promotes the integration of Architecture topic in Agile projet. He does it quite smoothly by stressing that the first thing to do is to study the context of the product/project to decide if architecture is a major topic.

« How much architectural activity will a project need? It usually fluctuates widely depending on the project’s context. By context we mean the project’s environment—the organization, the domain, and so on—as well as specific factors such as project size, stable architecture, business model, team distribution, rate of change, the system’s age, criticality, and governance. Other influences can include the market situation, the company’s power and politics, the product’s expected life span, product type, organizational culture, and history »

The whole article and presentation are well balanced and non dogmatic which is quite different from what can be read by the promoters of XP and Scrum.

To have a better feeling of the position of Krutchen in the Agile sphere, I would advice to read The Elephants in the Agile room.