Although considered to be incompatible, a combination of agile methods and architectural modelling could open a new perspective in software development. On the one hand, agile methods offer the flexibility required today. On the other hand, architectural modelling is considered as a pre-requisite for the systematic cross-project reuse and for the resulting increase in software developer productivity. In this paper, I define an approach for the empirical validation of a novel process for agile architectural modelling that drives requirements elicitation through the use of patterns and components. I point out the challenges connected to the process development, its design variants (degrees of freedom) and propose a validation concept.1