Presentation Skills
Structure, pacing and the slide that carries the decision.
5 to work through
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beginner Multiple choice
Four minutes into a twenty-minute architecture slot a stakeholder asks a question that belongs on slide 14 and the discussion runs for eight minutes. You now have eight minutes and fourteen slides. What do you do?
3 min answer -
beginner
You have to present the same architecture to the board on Tuesday and to the engineering teams on Wednesday. How do the two differ?
1 min answer -
intermediate
An architect must present a genuinely complex distributed training architecture to a mixed audience in twenty minutes. What structure works?
2 min answer -
intermediate
Review this deck for a 25-minute architecture review: slides 1 to 6 cover the landing zone and network layout, 7 to 18 walk through each microservice, 19 to 26 show the data model, 27 to 31 give the test strategy, and 32 to 34 ask for four engineers for two quarters. The approval has been deferred twice. What would you cut, what would you change, and what would you leave alone?
3 min answer -
advanced
You have ten minutes with an executive team to get approval for an architectural investment. How do you structure it?
2 min answer
2 terms in this topic
Narrative Arc
Structuring a technical presentation as a problem, tension and resolution rather than as an ordered dump of findings.
practicePresentation Skills
Presenting architecture so a specific audience can make a decision — which requires knowing which decision and adapting everything to it.
Neighbouring topics
Architecture Communication
General material on communicating architecture.
Architecture Diagrams
Choosing an audience and refusing to mix levels of abstraction.
C4 Model
Context, container, component and code as four separate diagrams.
Context Diagrams
The system as one box, with its users and external systems.
Sequence Diagrams
Ordered message exchange, and walking the failure of each arrow.
Data-Flow Diagrams
Following the data across trust boundaries rather than the calls.
Deployment Diagrams
What runs where, in which zone, behind which boundary.
Communicating Threat Models
Making risk legible to people who will fund or accept it.
Writing Decision Records
Context, alternatives and consequences, written once and never edited.
Technical Proposals
A written argument circulated before the decision feels made.
Architecture Reviews
Reviewing early enough to influence rather than to veto.
Presenting to Executives
Decision first, cost, risk, and what happens if we do nothing.
Presenting to Engineers
Mechanism, alternatives rejected, and what you are unsure about.
Explaining Trade-offs
Naming what was given up, and the condition that would change it.
Handling Disagreement
Arguing from consequences, and escalating in the room.
Negotiation
Trading on interests rather than positions, with priced options.
Documentation Practice
Keeping documents close to the code and honest about staleness.
Written Communication
Writing that survives being read without you in the room.
Facilitation
Running a design session that reaches a decision.