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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

32 terms shown.

Term Kind Topic What it is
Adoption Barrier Diagnosis Why Teams Built Their Own, Duplication Root Cause practice Application Rationalisation Treating duplicated internal systems as evidence that the shared option was harder to adopt than to rebuild - and fixing that before consolidating, or the duplication returns.
Advisory Review Model practice Architecture Review Boards Running architecture review as a consulting service that improves designs rather than as an approval gate that permits them.
Application Portfolio Management practice Application Portfolio Management Managing the set of applications as an investment portfolio — deciding what to invest in, maintain, contain and retire.
Application Portfolio Management APM, Application Rationalisation practice Enterprise Architecture Maintaining an inventory of every application with its owner, cost, business value and technical health, and using it to decide what to invest in, replace or retire.
Application Portfolio Rationalisation APM, Portfolio Rationalisation practice Application Rationalisation Systematically assessing every application in the estate to decide what to keep, invest in, consolidate or retire.
Application Rationalisation practice Application Rationalisation Systematically reducing the number of applications in an estate by consolidating duplicates and retiring low-value systems.
Architecture Review Board ARB, Design Authority practice Enterprise Architecture A forum that reviews significant designs against standards, risks and strategy before commitment.
Architecture Roadmap practice Architecture Roadmaps A sequenced plan of architectural change expressed as capability outcomes and decision points rather than as a fixed timeline of projects.
Capability-to-Application Mapping practice Capability Maps in EA Linking each business capability to the systems that support it, which is what converts two inventories into an analysis tool.
Coordination-Cost Metric Services Per Change, Teams Per Feature, Lockstep Ratio practice EA Metrics The number of independently-owned services and teams that must change together for a typical feature - the clearest available signal that architectural boundaries are imposing delivery cost, and one almost nob…
EA Framework Selection practice EA Frameworks Choosing how much formal enterprise architecture method an organisation needs, on the basis that most need considerably less than the frameworks describe.
Enterprise Architecture EA Practice, Architecture Function practice Enterprise Architecture The practice of owning the architectural decisions whose costs and benefits land on different teams or outside any team's planning horizon - the decisions competent delivery teams have no incentive or informat…
Exception Register Waiver Log, Standard Deviation Record practice Technology Standards A record of every deviation from a standard, with approver, rationale and review date - which makes violations deliberate rather than silent and tells you whether the standard describes the right rule.
Governed Exception Waiver, Standards Exception practice Technology Standards A deliberate, scoped, time-limited departure from a standard, recorded with an owner - which is always better than the ungoverned workaround it prevents.
InnerSource practice InnerSource Applying open-source collaboration practices inside an organisation, so teams can contribute to code they do not own instead of waiting for it.
InnerSource Contribution Contract Contribution Contract, InnerSource Maintainer Contract practice InnerSource The published statement of what a shared internal component accepts what it refuses and how fast it will answer - which makes a maintainer's "no" fast and survivable instead of turning openness into an unbound…
Machine-Checkable Standard Executable Standard, Automated Conformance Rule practice Architecture Governance An architecture rule written so that a program can decide whether a change complies, enforced at merge or deploy time, which is the only form of governance whose capacity scales with the rate of change.
Pace-Layered Application Strategy Pace Layering, PACE Layers practice Application Portfolio Management Sorting applications by how fast the business needs them to change - records slowly, differentiators quarterly, innovations weekly - and giving each layer its own governance funding and integration rules inste…
Paved Road Golden Path practice Enterprise Architecture A supported, opinionated default way to build and run a service, made easy enough that teams choose it rather than being required to.
Platform Team Product Model practice Platform Teams Running an internal platform team with product management disciplines — users, roadmap, support, metrics — rather than as an infrastructure function.
Portfolio Assessment Matrix practice Application Portfolio Management Plotting each application on business value against technical quality, producing a disposition for every system in the estate.
Radar Ring Semantics practice Technology Radar The meaning attached to each ring of a technology radar, which determines whether it guides decisions or merely lists opinions.
Reference Architecture practice Enterprise Architecture A pre-approved, documented template for a recurring class of solution, so that similar problems do not get individually redesigned.
Reference Implementation practice Reference Architectures A working example of a reference architecture that teams can run, read and copy, as opposed to a document describing one.
Roadmapping practice Architecture Roadmaps Sequencing architectural change so that each step delivers value and is safe to stop after — rather than planning a destination nobody reaches.
Significance Trigger Review Trigger, Architecturally Significant Change practice Architecture Review Boards A pre-defined, published condition that requires architectural review - so that governance covers what matters and does not become a queue in front of everything else.
Spend Control Gate Funding Gate, Investment Approval Control practice Paved Roads Architecture governance applied at the point money is committed rather than at design review, so the conversation happens while the decision is still reversible and the centre has actual authority.
Standards Lifecycle practice Technology Standards Managing technology standards through explicit states with review dates, so the standard set reflects current reality rather than past decisions.
Technology Stack Standardisation practice Technology Architecture Converging on a supported set of platforms, languages and tools to reduce operational surface, while allowing justified exceptions.
Technology Standards practice Technology Standards Constraining technology variety to reduce operational cost — with a waiver path, or the standard is broken quietly rather than formally.
TOGAF practice Enterprise Architecture An enterprise architecture framework whose central element is the ADM, an iterative cycle from vision through business, data, application and technology architecture to implementation governance.
TOGAF in Practice practice TOGAF The most widely adopted enterprise architecture framework — useful as a checklist and vocabulary, harmful when followed as a process.