Pragmatism
The simplest architecture that meets the requirements usually wins.
4 to work through
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intermediate
An architect must choose between the correct design and the one that ships in time. How should pragmatism be exercised without accumulating unmanageable debt?
2 min answer -
intermediate
You inherit a well-designed plan for a new order-management platform: eight months, event-sourced, three services, a migration path off the legacy system. The business now needs working functionality in ten weeks for a contractual commitment. How do you sequence this so the ten-week work is not thrown away?
3 min answer -
intermediate
You review a design for an internal tool with 200 users: microservices, Kubernetes, event sourcing, CQRS, multi-region. How do you respond?
2 min answer -
advanced
Where is the boundary between pragmatism and negligence in architectural decisions?
2 min answer
2 terms in this topic
Good Enough Architecture
Designing to what the situation actually requires rather than to what would be ideal, on the basis that unnecessary sophistication carries permanent cost.
conceptOver-Engineering
Building capability the requirements do not justify, paying its complexity cost continuously in exchange for flexibility that is rarely used.
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.
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.