Terminology

2225 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 areas2225 Architecture Fundamentals77 Distributed Systems107 Data Architecture110 Cloud Architecture94 Networking88 API & Integration Architecture82 Reliability & Resilience75 Observability70 Performance & Capacity Engineering72 Security Architecture86 Cost Architecture & FinOps71 Business Architecture67 Architecture Communication67 Enterprise Architecture66 Legacy Modernization71 AI-Era Architecture74 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 Architecture69 Streaming & Real-Time Data69 Data Governance & Semantics74 Frontend & Experience Architecture66 Edge, Mobile & IoT68 Regulatory & Data Protection Architecture65 Assurance, Audit & Model Risk69

Kind Any concept801 practice736 pattern377 metric127 case-study77 tool62 protocol45

26 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Artefact Promotion Build Once Deploy Many	practice	Artifact Management	Moving the identical tested artefact between environments rather than rebuilding for each - so that what runs in production is what was tested.
Artifact Promotion	practice	Artifact Management	Moving one immutable build between repositories as it earns trust, rather than rebuilding it for each environment.
Automated Release Verification	practice	Deployment Gates	A gate that compares the new version's live signals against the old one's and decides, on stated criteria, whether to continue or revert.
Build Reproducibility Reproducible Build, Deterministic Build	practice	Build Reproducibility	The same source input produces a bit-for-bit identical artifact, on any machine, at any time.
Change-Aware Test Selection Affected Test Selection, Predictive Test Selection	practice	Pipeline Architecture	Running only the tests a change could affect, determined from a dependency graph - with periodic full runs to verify the selection itself.
Configuration Drift Detection	practice	IaC Modules & Drift	Continuously comparing declared infrastructure against what actually exists, so out-of-band change is found on a Tuesday rather than during a rebuild.
Content Artefact Release Data-as-Release, Non-Code Release Engineering	practice	Artifact Management	Applying full release engineering - versioning, staged rollout, health gates and a rollback path - to artefacts that are not code but are interpreted by privileged code, such as detection content, rule sets, m…
Continuous Integration Discipline	practice	Continuous Integration Discipline	The behavioural commitments that make CI a defect-detection system rather than a build server that runs tests.
Delivery Pipelines	practice	Delivery & Release Engineering	The automated path from commit to production — where speed and trustworthiness determine whether anyone uses the feedback it produces.
Dependency Reproducibility Same Commit Same Dependencies, Pinned Builds	practice	Build Reproducibility	Guaranteeing that a given commit pulls the same dependencies every time - the practical subset of build reproducibility that delivers most of its value for a fraction of the effort.
Deployment Freeze Change Freeze, Code Freeze	practice	Change Management vs CD	A period during which deployments are prohibited, intended to protect a high-stakes business window.
Deployment Gate Quality Gate, Approval Gate	practice	Deployment Gates	A condition a change must satisfy before it advances, whether evaluated by a machine or signed by a person.
Environment Strategy	practice	Environment Strategy	The deliberate choice of how many pre-production environments exist, what each is for, and how faithfully each mirrors production.
Forward Fix Roll Forward, Fix Forward	practice	Rollback & Forward Fix	Recovering from a bad release by shipping a corrective change rather than reverting to the previous version.
GitOps	practice	GitOps	Declaring desired infrastructure state in version control and letting an in-cluster agent continuously reconcile reality to it.
Hermetic Build	practice	Build Reproducibility	A build whose output is a function only of its declared inputs, so the same commit cannot produce two different artifacts.
Infrastructure State Partition State Splitting, Per-Domain State	practice	IaC Modules & Drift	Splitting one infrastructure state file into several along ownership and lifecycle boundaries, so plans are fast and a mistaken apply cannot reach unrelated resources.
Merge Queue Merge Train, Serialised Integration	practice	Continuous Integration Discipline	Testing each change against the combination that will actually exist after merge, rather than against the base it was written on - preventing the broken trunk that concurrent merges produce.
Pipeline Credential Scope OIDC Federation for CI, Workload Identity for CI	practice	Pipeline Secrets	Granting a pipeline short-lived, narrowly scoped identity for exactly the environment it is deploying to, rather than a long-lived key.
Policy as Code Guardrail Policy	practice	Policy as Code	Expressing organisational rules as executable code evaluated automatically in pipelines and at admission, instead of as prose enforced by review.
Progressive Rollout Wave Deployment, Staged Rollout	practice	Multi-Region Rollout	Deploying across regions or cells in ordered waves with soak time between them, so a defect is contained to the earliest wave.
Significant-Minority Trigger Defined Escalation Criteria, When Humans Review	practice	Deployment Gates	A stated rule defining which changes require human review, so the reservation of manual approval is a rule rather than a judgement made under time pressure.
Soak Period Bake Time, Observation Window	practice	Multi-Region Rollout	The deliberate waiting time between rollout stages, long enough to surface problems that do not appear immediately - and the first thing compressed under delivery pressure.
Stacked Changes Stacked Diffs, Patch Series, Dependent Change Chain	practice	Branching Models	Splitting one body of work into a chain of small dependent changes that each review and merge on their own, so branch lifetime is set by the size of a link rather than the size of the feature.
Standard Change	practice	Change Management vs CD	A pre-authorised, low-risk, repeatable change type that may be executed without going through a change advisory board.
Trunk-Based Development TBD	practice	Branching Models	All developers integrate small changes into a single shared branch at least daily, keeping it always releasable.