Research & Evaluation
Assessing a technology quickly without adopting it by accident.
5 to work through
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intermediate
A team's evaluation of a new datastore is a benchmark report: throughput at three concurrency levels, p99 latency, and a cost comparison. They want to commit. Review the evaluation. What is missing and what would you add?
2 min answer -
intermediate
An architect must evaluate an unfamiliar technology for a significant decision. What research approach produces a reliable judgement?
2 min answer -
intermediate Multiple choice
You are evaluating a database whose only production references are the vendor's own case studies. The benchmark in their documentation is excellent. You have one week. Which single piece of evidence would most change your confidence?
3 min answer -
advanced
A travel-search platform aggregating supplier prices - the business shape Expedia operates in - measures 40 million price updates a day and must choose between a managed search service and running the engine itself. A two-engineer two-week spike would settle it. Work out when buying that information is cheaper than deciding now.
3 min answer -
advanced
How would you evaluate an unfamiliar technology for a critical workload in one week?
2 min answer
4 terms in this topic
Reference Call
A structured conversation with an engineer running the technology in production at your scale, which is the only evidence source that reveals operabi…
practiceResearch Skills
Finding out what is true about a technology or a problem, efficiently and without being misled by marketing or by other people's context.
practiceSource Triangulation
Confirming a technical claim from several independent sources of differing type, because most available material is marketing or an unrepresentative …
practiceSpike Budget
The arithmetic that decides whether to buy evidence before committing - comparing the full cost of an investigation against the probability of choosi…
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.
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.
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.