Meta-Skills
General material on how architects think and work.
3 to work through
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intermediate
A strong senior engineer is promoted to architect and struggles. Which skills transfer and which must be learned?
2 min answer -
intermediate
You must choose a data store this week. The product team cannot tell you the expected query patterns or the growth rate. What do you do?
2 min answer -
advanced
Walk me through an architectural decision in your current system that you would make differently at ten times the scale. What evidence would tell you that the moment has arrived?
2 min answer
6 terms in this topic
Constraint Thinking
Designing for the budget, timeline, skills, regulations and existing estate that actually exist, rather than for the ones a textbook assumes.
practiceDecision-Making Under Uncertainty
Choosing well when the information is incomplete — by bounding the downside and buying information, rather than by waiting for certainty.
practiceFirst-Principles Reasoning
Reducing a problem to the physical, mathematical or economic facts it rests on, then reasoning up, rather than reasoning from analogy or convention.
practicePragmatism
Preferring the simplest architecture that satisfies the requirements, and treating additional structure as a cost that must be justified.
practiceSystems Thinking
Reasoning about a system in terms of the interactions and feedback loops between its parts, rather than the parts individually.
practiceTrade-off Analysis
Making the costs of an architectural choice explicit and comparable, rather than presenting a recommendation as if it were free.
Neighbouring topics
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.
Mentoring
Growing architectural judgement in other people.
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.