2023-06-04 Sunday - Benefits of Early Architecture Engagement

[image credit: stevepb on pixabay.com]

 

In early May, I completed an architecture assessment for a start-up.

Why: There was no understanding of the architecture of what was built (no documentation/architecture/design artifacts - just code) - and no understanding of some of the critical issues/risks that existed in what was delivered.

Findings: 48 specific findings/recommendations, to help guide them in their future efforts.

Effort: An abbreviated/compressed ~2 week effort

Earlier Engagement: This would have been ideal - to help them avoid some decisions/outcomes - that will continue to have ramifications for years. 

[Note: They expended a significant amount of their capital to engage with an offshore team to build their MVP. No documentation, just code (no design, no architecture artifacts)]

This would make an *excellent* case study - of how beneficial it can be to have a broadly experienced architect generalist engaged - from the beginning - even with a small startup.

*Some* of the types of artifacts and assistance - that can help even such early stage companies, or even internal (larger company) initiatives:

- Vision, Strategy, Roadmap
- Business Capability Model
- Business Requirements elaboration (Personas, Actors, Scenarios, Use Cases)
- Business Architecture
- Business Process Flows
- Technology Evaluation & Selection
- Technology Reference Model
- Cloud/Infrastructure Architecture Model
- Integration Architecture Model
- Technology Roadmap
- Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs)
- Vendor assessments/evaluations
- agile software development practices
- Solution Architecture
- Engineering mentoring & guidance
- Code Reviews
- Retrospectives
- Technical Risk mitigation
- Security Architecture
- Information Architecture
- System Reliability Engineering
- Operations, Monitoring, Observability
- CI/CD
- Quality Assurance & Testing methodologies
- Principles, Policies, Standards, Specifications
- Legal, Regulatory, Compliance