Architecture Foundations
This section covers the mental models, processes, and frameworks that define how a solution architect thinks and works.
What’s Here
Solution Architecture
- solutions-architecture — What a solution architect does, NFRs, trade-off analysis
- thinking-like-an-architect — Mental models, the scale of the role, red flags
- software-planning — ADRs, RFCs, SLOs, architecture reviews
Non-Functional Requirements
- README — NFR taxonomy and how to define them
- Performance — Latency, throughput, caching, database optimization
- Availability — The nines, redundancy, health checks, SLOs vs SLAs
- Scalability — Vertical vs horizontal, stateless design, sharding, auto-scaling
- Reliability — Failure modes, circuit breakers, MTTR, bulkheads
- Security — CIA triad, defense in depth, threat modeling, encryption
- Maintainability — Modifiability, technical debt, CI/CD quality gates
- Disaster Recovery — RPO/RTO, backup/restore, failover strategies
- Capacity Planning — Resource forecasting, cost modeling, right-sizing
- back-of-the-envelope-calculations — Quick capacity estimates
- reliability-vs-availability — The distinction that matters
Migration Patterns
- README — Strategies for safe system and data migration
- Blue-Green Deployments — Zero-downtime deployment with instant rollback
- Expand-Contract — Safe API and schema evolution without breaking consumers
- Strangler Fig — Incremental legacy system replacement
- Data Migration — Bulk data movement with zero downtime
Design Principles
- high-cohesion-loose-coupling — Object-oriented design principles applied to system architecture
Start Here
If you’re new to solution architecture:
- thinking-like-an-architect — understand the mindset shift from engineer to architect
- solutions-architecture — understand the role and its responsibilities
- README — learn to define what “good enough” means
Then pick your topic based on the problem you’re solving.