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

67 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Two-Pizza Team	concept	Business Architecture	Amazon's heuristic that a team should be small enough to be fed by two pizzas, and — the substantive part — should own its service end to end.
Unfunded Technical Consequence Business-Model Debt, Structural Liability, Implied Requirement	concept	Business Capabilities	A computational or operational difficulty implied by a business-model decision but never costed, because the decision was evaluated on commercial merits in a conversation the technical consequence was not part of.
Value Stream	concept	Business Architecture	The end-to-end sequence of activities that delivers a result to a customer, viewed across whatever departments and systems it happens to cross.
Value Streams	concept	Value Streams	The end-to-end sequence from a customer's trigger to their outcome — the frame that shows whether teams are aligned to flow or to function.
Vendor Reversal Cost Buy Unwind Cost, Vendor Disentanglement Estimate	metric	Build vs Buy	The engineer-months needed to unwind a buy decision - dominated by business logic that leaked into the vendor's configuration rather than by anything the contract's termination clause covers.
Virtual Waiting Room Queue-It Pattern, On-Sale Queue, Demand Buffer	pattern	Business Continuity	A separately-hosted queue in front of a constrained system that admits users at a sustainable rate with a held place and honest status - converting an overload failure into a wait, and making allocation fairne…
Weighted Shortest Job First	practice	Portfolio Prioritisation	Sequencing work by dividing the cost of delaying it by the effort to deliver it, which maximises value delivered per unit of time.