Advisory / Architecture
Solution Design
The right architecture costs 5% of the project and decides the other 95%.
When you need it
A new product, a major rebuild, an integration that touches everything, a scaling step the current system was never designed for. The moments where a wrong structural decision costs a year and a right one is invisible — that asymmetry is the entire case for doing architecture before code.
The process
- Constraints first. Business goals, budget, team, compliance, deadlines. Architecture that ignores the organization building it is fiction with diagrams.
- Options, priced. Two or three viable architectures, each with cost, risk, and team implications stated. Not one grand design — a decision between real alternatives.
- The verdict. We recommend one, in writing, with the reasoning that survives a hostile board question. Disagreement is welcome; the document is built to be argued with.
- Handover that sticks. We present to the engineering team, not just the sponsor — and we stay available while the first components prove the design.
What you avoid
The rewrite at month nine. The vendor quote sized against a vague spec. The scaling cliff that was visible on day one to anyone who had seen it before. We have seen it before.