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Evolutionary Architecture

Questions to ask a team

If you’re considering a role on a team that practises evolutionary architecture, these questions help you understand how they actually apply it. They work in interviews and in your first weeks on the team. The answers also show where your own experience fits.

Philosophy and practice

Section titled “Philosophy and practice”
  • What does “evolutionary architecture” mean in practice here? Which parts of the book do you lean on most?
  • What are the most important architectural characteristics for the platform right now, and how were they chosen?
  • Can you give an example of a decision you deliberately deferred to the last responsible moment?

Fitness functions and governance

Section titled “Fitness functions and governance”
  • Which fitness functions exist today? Which are automated, and where do they run (PR, pipeline, runtime)?
  • How are guardrails (SCPs, Config rules, Control Tower controls) managed? Are they in source control with a pipeline?
  • How are new controls introduced: detective first, then preventive?
  • What’s the exception process, and how are exceptions tracked and expired?
  • Is there an architecture review board? What still needs human review, and why?

Decisions

Section titled “Decisions”
  • Do you use ADRs? Where do they live, and who writes them?
  • Do you use something like the advice process, or a different decision model?
  • Is there an internal tech radar?

Platform

Section titled “Platform”
  • How is the AWS organisation structured (OUs, accounts per workload/environment)?
  • What golden paths exist (CDK constructs, Terraform modules, Service Catalog)? How are they versioned and deprecated?
  • How do you measure platform success: adoption, DORA metrics, developer satisfaction?
  • What’s the hardest-to-change decision on the platform today, and would you make it again?

Teams

Section titled “Teams”
  • How are product and platform teams organised, and how do they interact with each other?
  • Which platform capabilities are self-service today, and which still need a ticket?

The role

Section titled “The role”
  • What would success look like for an enterprise architect on this team after six months?
  • Where do you see the biggest gap between the current state and an evolutionary approach?
  • How does enterprise architecture work with platform engineering and the application teams?