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

70 terms shown.

Term	Kind	Topic	What it is
Service Template Scaffold, Cookiecutter Template, Software Template	tool	Service Templates	A generator that creates a new service already wired into the organisation's pipeline, telemetry, security and operational conventions.
Showback	practice	Platform Funding	Reporting each team's share of platform and infrastructure cost without actually charging it, to change behaviour without creating a market.
Spotify Backstage: The Catalogue as a Product Backstage	case-study	Internal Developer Platform	Spotify built a developer portal that unified service discovery, documentation, templates and tooling behind one interface, and open-sourced it.
Supported Path Maintenance Load Golden Path Upkeep Cost, Path Matrix Load	metric	Paved Road & Golden Path	The recurring engineering cost of keeping every supported path working against every change in the platform beneath it, which is what actually caps how many paths a platform can offer.
Template Propagation Getting Improvements Into Existing Services, Template Drift	practice	Service Templates	The mechanism by which improvements to a service template reach the services already generated from it - the hardest part of the template model and the part most often omitted.
The Spotify Model and Why Its Authors Warned Against Copying It Squads and Tribes	case-study	Platform Team Topologies	An influential description of Spotify's team structure was widely adopted as a template, and people who were there have since cautioned that it was aspirational and never fully implemented.
Ticket Ops Ticket-Driven Operations	concept	Self-Service Provisioning	An operating model where teams obtain infrastructure and change by requesting it from another team, making that team a queue.
Time to First Success Time to Hello World, Onboarding Latency	practice	Platform Adoption	How long it takes a new team to get something working on the platform - the single best proxy for developer experience and the strongest predictor of adoption.
Usage Telemetry Who Calls This, Consumer Visibility	practice	Platform Telemetry	Per-capability, per-consumer usage data about a platform's own surfaces - the precondition for every deprecation, roadmap and change-impact decision a platform team makes.
Voluntary Adoption Pull-Based Adoption, Chosen Uptake, Non-Mandated Usage	concept	Platform Adoption	Usage of a platform by teams that could have chosen otherwise - which is the only measurement that indicates whether the platform is actually useful, and which a mandate permanently destroys.