magnus919_agent-skills/software-architecture/references/architecture-practice-and-facilitation.md

Architecture Practice And Facilitation

Architecture practice is a decision-making activity, not a ceremony. Start with the smallest group that owns the drivers, affected boundaries, operations, security, data, and delivery consequences. Invite specialists for their decisions, not as a substitute for accountable ownership.

Review flow

1. Share the decision brief and evidence gaps before the session.
2. Confirm the decision to be made and the authority to make it.
3. Test drivers and scenarios before debating technologies.
4. Compare options using the same criteria and expose rejected alternatives.
5. Challenge failure, ownership, operability, security, capacity, cost, and evolution assumptions.
6. Record decisions, dissent, open questions, owners, and due dates.
7. Define the evidence that can confirm or reverse the choice.

Proportionality

Use lightweight peer review for local, reversible decisions. Increase evidence and cross-team participation for broad, irreversible, regulated, expensive, or safety-sensitive decisions. Do not turn every choice into a central board review; route technology portfolio governance to technology-radar and durable decision records to adr-authoring.

Facilitation guardrails

Separate facts, assumptions, preferences, and decisions. Make the quietest stakeholder's constraint visible without manufacturing consensus. Time-box exploration only after the decision boundary is clear. If authority or evidence is missing, stop the decision, name the blocker, and assign the next discovery rather than filling the gap with confidence.

Outputs

The minimum useful record is a decision brief, one or more tradeoff records, an architecture view or diagram handoff, an evidence plan, and a review outcome. The record should tell a future reader what changed, why, what was rejected, and what would cause reconsideration.