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. A wrong structural decision costs a year; a right one is invisible. That asymmetry is the whole 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. A decision between real alternatives, not one grand design.
- The recommendation. We pick one, in writing, with 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 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.
