The foundational decisions — boundaries, data and integrations — made deliberately and written down, before they calcify into something expensive.
Four areas where this work is won or lost.
What belongs together, what does not, and where the seams go so the system can change one part at a time.
Entities, ownership and consistency rules, because a wrong data model is the costliest thing to migrate.
How the system talks to the outside — contracts, failure behaviour and who is the source of truth.
The load the plan has to survive and what it costs to run, stated as numbers rather than adjectives.
A short loop with a written result at every step.
Business goals, load, compliance and the team that must run it. Architecture follows constraints, not fashion.
Two or three options with their trade-offs and costs, so the decision is made on evidence.
A decision record and diagrams the team can follow and challenge, not a document that dies in a folder.
Chosen for your product, not for our habit.
Tell us the goals and the load. We will lay out the options and their costs before a line is written.