Mentoring
Growing architectural judgement in other people.
3 to work through
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intermediate Multiple choice
An engineer you mentor proposes a design that will work but is not the one you would choose: a single queue with a database-backed dedupe table where you would have used the broker's own idempotent producer. They have thought it through. You are reviewing it. What should you do?
2 min answer -
intermediate
How does an architect develop architectural judgement in others rather than just answering their questions?
2 min answer -
advanced
How do you develop architectural judgement in an engineer, as opposed to reviewing their designs?
2 min answer
3 terms in this topic
Mentoring
Developing other people's architectural judgement — the highest-leverage activity available to a senior architect.
practiceMentoring Ladder
Adjusting the level of direction given to someone according to their experience with the specific task, from demonstration through to sponsorship.
practiceOverrule Threshold
The stated rule a reviewer uses to decide when to impose their own design over a workable one - reversal cost and blast radius, not personal preferen…
Neighbouring topics
Meta-Skills
General material on how architects think and work.
Systems Thinking
Interactions and feedback loops rather than isolated components.
Trade-off Analysis
Making costs explicit and comparable rather than asserting a preference.
First-Principles Reasoning
Reducing to physics, mathematics and economics, then reasoning up.
Failure Thinking
Asking of every box and arrow how it fails and how you would know.
Constraint Thinking
Designing for the budget, skills and regulations that actually exist.
Pattern Recognition
Seeing a familiar problem, and checking whether the forces match.
Pragmatism
The simplest architecture that meets the requirements usually wins.
Judgement Under Uncertainty
Choosing the best worst case when information is missing.
Business Understanding
Connecting a design to the outcome that pays for it.
Influence Without Authority
Getting decisions adopted when you cannot mandate them.
Continuous Learning
Staying current without chasing every new thing.
Estimation
Sizing work and cost honestly, with the uncertainty stated.
Prioritisation
Choosing what not to do, and defending it.
Research & Evaluation
Assessing a technology quickly without adopting it by accident.
Handling Ambiguity
Making progress when the requirements are not yet knowable.
Technical Leadership
Setting direction and carrying accountability without a team reporting to you.
Ethics in Architecture
Privacy, accessibility, sustainability and the consequences of a design.
Career Development
Growing from senior engineer to architect and beyond.