Option appraisal pragmatic guide #392
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lhancock-scottlogic
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lhancock-scottlogic
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Great read, I learned some stuff about architecture decision-making today!
As a more general suggestion, you could capitalise the important words on your main title, section titles, quick checklists, etc., i.e. Options appraisal: a pragmatic guide for architecture decisions ->
Options Appraisal: A pragmatic guide for Architecture Decisions
| - success is multi-dimensional (*cost* AND *speed* AND *risk* AND *operability*...) | ||
| - I can already see future-me asking "why did we choose this again?" | ||
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| If it's a low-risk choice or you're still exploring, a quick spike, PoC, or desk-based research is often enough. |
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It may be worth writing out "proof of concept" just for the first time it's written in this post, I had to rack my brain a bit for the acronym's meaning, as it's not one I see every day 😁
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Fair enough, I have changed it to proof of concept :)
| | -------- | -------------------- | ------------- | ---------------- | ----- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ||
| | Baseline | 5 → 15 | 1 → 5 | 4 → 8 | 28 | Known and operable, but weakest security posture | | ||
| | Option A | 3 → 9 | 3 → 15 | 4 → 8 | 32 | Balanced improvement with manageable operational cost | | ||
| | Option B | 1 → 3 | 5 → 25 | 1 → 2 | 30 | Pushes security to the maximum, but is the hardest option to live with day to day | |
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I'm not sure if it's intentional, but the column separator line between Operability and Total is thicker than the other lines
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It wasn’t intentional, no... You have eagle eyes! 👀😄
This looks like a quirk of markdown table rendering, but it actually works quite nicely here as it separates the criteria from the total. I’m inclined to leave it unless it’s distracting?
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That's very weird! I agree it looks good, I'm just wary that relying on "bug" behaviour can bite us in case it changes in the future - it would be nice to know why it's doing this so we can make sure it keeps doing it consistently
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I think is something to do with long then short column names. I would not know how to "fix" that to be honest.
Co-authored-by: lhancock-scottlogic <110816543+lhancock-scottlogic@users.noreply.github.com>
…points to improve the overall flow.
| - options-appraisal | ||
| - trade-offs | ||
| - architecture-decision-records | ||
| summary: A practical, lightweight way to compare options, surface trade-offs early, and leave a decision trail your future self will thank you for. |
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A thought here: it's not about something your future self will thank you for in our context, it's about something that the rest of the organisation will thank you for when you're no longer there. This would be better reworded to stress that it's for everyone's benefit, not just your own
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| title: "Options appraisal: a pragmatic guide for architecture decisions" | |||
| date: 2025-12-19 00:00:00 Z | |||
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Update the date (here and in the filename) please
| | -------- | -------------------- | ------------- | ---------------- | ----- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ||
| | Baseline | 5 → 15 | 1 → 5 | 4 → 8 | 28 | Known and operable, but weakest security posture | | ||
| | Option A | 3 → 9 | 3 → 15 | 4 → 8 | 32 | Balanced improvement with manageable operational cost | | ||
| | Option B | 1 → 3 | 5 → 25 | 1 → 2 | 30 | Pushes security to the maximum, but is the hardest option to live with day to day | |
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That's very weird! I agree it looks good, I'm just wary that relying on "bug" behaviour can bite us in case it changes in the future - it would be nice to know why it's doing this so we can make sure it keeps doing it consistently
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