For the past few decades, data became big data, and anything else which was difficult and took time wanted to be more agile. Agile in the original manifesto was meant to break the long rigid working methods which did not always allow stakeholders to see periodic value increase. Developers didn't always enjoy having to wait for a design to be completed before they could provide meaningful software and received feedback.

How the pendulum has swung. Nowadays, everything is becoming agile, originally with software development in mind, now management is agile, and all needs to be having stand-ups. Under the pressure of the new dogma, architectural work is pressured either out of existence or to align with the agile movement as well. But some tasks simply require time and deep thought. Some puzzles cannot be solved by starting to build from day one, some simply require time because they are complicated.

Do not feel ashamed when you have nothing worthwhile to present at the pace of stand-ups. Not all minimal viable products are value increasing, either. Coming up with a solid architecture, or aligning the work with existing architectural groundwork, can take time. That time may actually be very well spent time. Being agile does not exempt organizations from doing the groundwork.

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