Before You Call It Architecture, Ask These 3 Simple Questions

1. What Must Never Change — Even If Technology Changes?

If you move from monolith to microservices…

If you move from on-prem to cloud…

If you replace one rule engine with another…

What must still remain true?

For example in retail lending:

• Can pricing happen before risk scoring?

• Can approval bypass risk?

• Can override bypass audit?

• Can disbursement happen without approval?

If the answer to those changes when technology changes, then what you had was not architecture.

It was configuration.

Architecture is what must remain true no matter how you build it.

2.Can You Explain The System Without Talking About Tools?

If someone asks:

How does lending actually work here?

Can you answer without saying:

“We use Azure…”“We use microservices…”“We use Kafka…”“We use Kubernetes…”

Can you explain:

• How decisions are made?

• In what order?

• Who has authority?

• What cannot be bypassed?

If you cannot describe how the system works without mentioning technology, then the technology is your architecture.

And that is dangerous.

Because technology changes.

3.If The Architect Leaves Tomorrow, What Breaks?

What breaks first is not IT Operations (P6). Systems keep running. Releases continue. That only proves runtime stability.

What weakens is clarity across P1 Strategy, P2 Process/Sequence, P3 System Logic, and P4 Component Specifications.

One team reads a pricing rule one way. Another assumes something slightly different. Risk is unsure whether override authority applies across all channels. Impact analysis takes longer because the connection between Strategy intent (P1) and System Logic (P3) is no longer instantly clear.

Architecture is not interpretation.

 Architecture is a visual model.

If the visual model connecting P1–P4 is incomplete, people start explaining instead of showing.

P1–P4 define architecture.

P5 IT Tasks implement it.

P6 IT Operations execute it.

When P1–P4 are not clearly visualized, hesitation begins.

Will people argue about:

• Who owns the override?

• Whether pricing consumes risk correctly?

• Whether a rule applies across all channels?

• Whether settlement timing is correct?

If clarity collapses when a person leaves, the architecture was inside a person mind — not the enterprise asset.

The Hard Reality

If the “architecture” deck is 12 slides and 9 of them describe deployment topology, then what is being approved is construction. Architecture is the structural visualization that constrains construction. Not the other way around.

If every new architect redefines sequencing, authority, subsystem boundaries, or traceability rules — then the enterprise never had architecture. It had interpretation.

And interpretation does not survive leadership change.

So, Approve construction (implementation) decisions if you want. But do not call them architecture.

Architecture must outlive the architect. If it does not, it was never architecture.