Terminology

2185 terms, tools, patterns and metrics an architect is expected to use precisely. Each one gets a short explanation of what it is, and — where it matters — what it is commonly confused with. Search filters as you type; the column headers sort.

All areas2185 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture89 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture81 Cost Architecture & FinOps66 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization66 AI-Era Architecture69 Software Architecture & Engineering71 Architecture Patterns71 Architecture Decision-Making63 The Architect's Meta-Skills61 Delivery & Release Engineering66 Platform Engineering & Developer Experience70 Testing & Quality Architecture66 Data Platform Architecture64 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics69 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk64

Kind Any concept785 practice729 pattern362 metric125 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

29 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Access Pattern Driven Modelling	practice	SQL vs NoSQL	Designing the data model from the queries the application must serve, rather than from an abstract normalised representation of the entities.
ADR Lifecycle	practice	Decision Practice	The states an architecture decision record moves through — proposed, accepted, superseded, deprecated — and the discipline that keeps the set trustworthy.
Architecture Decision Record ADR	practice	Architecture Decision-Making	A short, immutable document capturing one architectural decision, its context, the alternatives, and its consequences.
Architecture Decision Record Practice	practice	Decision Practice	The habits that make decision records useful six months later — writing at decision time, recording rejected options, and never editing history.
Architecture Trade-off Analysis Method ATAM	practice	Architecture Decision-Making	A structured evaluation that scores an architecture against prioritised quality-attribute scenarios and identifies the points where those attributes conflict.
Build-vs-Buy Total Cost	practice	Build vs Buy	Comparing a purchased solution against building one on the full lifetime cost, including the maintenance and opportunity costs that estimates omit.
Consistency Choices	practice	Strong vs Eventual Consistency	Deciding, per operation, the weakest consistency guarantee that is still correct — rather than choosing one model for a system.
Consistency Level Selection	practice	Strong vs Eventual Consistency	Choosing the consistency guarantee per operation rather than per system, matching the cost of coordination to the business consequence of staleness.
Decision Context Capture	practice	Architecture Decision Records	Recording the situation, constraints and forces that made a decision reasonable, so that later readers can judge whether it still applies.
Decision Granularity One Decision Per Record, Record Scope	practice	Architecture Decision Records	How much a single decision record covers, chosen so a later change can replace exactly the part that has become wrong instead of invalidating a document that is mostly still correct.
Decision Rights Decision Ownership, Accountable Decider	practice	Architecture Decision-Making	An explicit statement of who decides what, so that consultation is bounded and decisions do not wait for a consensus nobody required.
Decision Trigger Revisit Condition, Pre-Agreed Threshold	practice	Managed vs Self-Managed	A number or condition agreed in advance that would cause a decision to be revisited - which converts a permanent choice into a monitored one and prevents both premature change and indefinite drift.
Decision Under Uncertainty	practice	Deciding Under Uncertainty	Choosing when the information needed to be confident is unavailable, using the cost of being wrong rather than waiting for certainty.
Deliberate Technical Debt	practice	Delivery vs Maintainability	A consciously chosen shortcut, recorded with its cost and a repayment trigger, as distinct from debt incurred by carelessness.
Differentiation Test	practice	Build vs Buy	The question of whether a capability is a source of competitive advantage, used as the primary filter in build-versus-buy decisions.
Fully-Loaded Comparison Total Cost Comparison, People-Inclusive TCO, Loaded Build-vs-Buy	practice	Managed vs Self-Managed	Comparing options with engineering time, operational burden and opportunity cost included rather than infrastructure and licence prices alone - which usually reverses the apparent answer at small and medium scale.
Managed versus Self-Managed	practice	Managed vs Self-Managed	Whether to run a component yourself — a decision that should default to managed and require a specific articulated reason to deviate.
Operational Burden Assessment	practice	Managed vs Self-Managed	Quantifying the ongoing engineering effort a self-managed component requires, so it can be compared honestly with a managed service's price.
Recorded Assumption Named Assumption with Trigger, Invisible-to-Monitored	practice	Deciding Under Uncertainty	Writing down the assumption a decision rests on, with the condition that would invalidate it - which converts an invisible dependency into a monitored one.
Region Selection Criteria	practice	Single vs Multi-Region	The factors determining where workloads run, in which data residency and latency usually dominate cost.
Region Strategy	practice	Single vs Multi-Region	How many regions, where, and in what topology — driven by residency, latency and availability requirements rather than by ambition.
Scenario-Based Comparison Concrete Scenario Evaluation, Cash Out the Qualities	practice	Trade-off Analysis Methods	Comparing design options against specific described situations rather than against abstract qualities - which forces vague terms to be cashed out and turns a discussion into a decision.
Sensitivity Analysis What-Would-Change-The-Answer Analysis	practice	Trade-off Analysis Methods	Identifying which assumption, if wrong, would change the decision - which tells you what to measure early and what to design to change cheaply.
Spike and Prototype	practice	Deciding Under Uncertainty	A time-boxed experiment run to reduce uncertainty about a specific question, producing evidence rather than a component.
Technology Evaluation Criteria	practice	Technology Selection	A standing set of dimensions for assessing a candidate technology, ensuring that operability and longevity are weighed alongside capability.
Technology Selection	practice	Technology Selection	Choosing a technology on the basis of fit, operability and organisational capacity — with a strong prior toward what you already run well.
Trade-off Analysis Methods	practice	Trade-off Analysis Methods	Structured ways to compare architectural options — valuable for making reasoning explicit, dangerous when they produce false precision.
Trigger Condition Revisit Trigger, Decision Tripwire, Monitorable Assumption	practice	Deciding Under Uncertainty	A specific, observable condition recorded alongside a decision that indicates it should be reconsidered - converting a point-in-time judgement into a monitorable position.
Weighted Decision Matrix	practice	Trade-off Analysis Methods	A scoring method that rates options against weighted criteria, used to expose disagreement about priorities rather than to produce an answer.