Internal Tooling·2023 Client-confidential
Architecture Decision System
Turning a senior engineer's judgment into something a team can reuse.
My role
Designer & builder
Outcome
Standardized solution design across 120+ criteria, improving consistency and delivery speed.
01
The problem
- In consulting, the quality of an architecture often depends on who happened to scope it. Two capable engineers could look at the same client and land on meaningfully different designs — not because one was wrong, but because there was no shared structure for the decision.
- That variance is expensive: it shows up as rework, inconsistent quality, and slow starts while each new engagement reinvents the reasoning.
02
The approach
- I designed intake and architecture tooling that captures the decisions a strong architect actually makes — encoded as 120+ criteria spanning data, workload, security, cost, and governance considerations.
- The tool doesn't replace judgment; it makes the judgment explicit and repeatable. It walks a team through the questions that matter and surfaces defensible defaults, leaving room to deviate deliberately.
- The goal was legibility: an architecture you can explain and defend, arrived at the same way whoever is holding the pen.
03
The outcome
- Solution-design decisions became consistent across teams and engagements, and new work started faster.
- Architecture reviews shifted from re-deriving basics to interrogating the interesting, high-stakes choices.
Technologies
PythonSolution ArchitectureDecision SystemsInternal Tooling