Okay, let me explain this. The way it's actually done is in-between. You can't really seriously agile your way into a great distributed architecture without som

Okay, let me explain this. The way it's actually done is in-between. You can't really seriously agile your way into a great distributed architecture without some sort of planning process. You create a very high level document explaining the main components of the program. You make a second one with details (in a waterfall way) explaining everything you are going to be concentrating on in depth for the next 1-2 months. The rest is kept very high level. Then you can just change course if the reception of the 1-2 month work isn't ideal or the company needs to change direction.