Review Templates
Standardized architecture review document templates including context, constraints, decisions, and risks.
Review Templates is a core discipline within Architecture Governance. It defines how technology systems should be designed, implemented, and governed to achieve reliable, secure, and maintainable outcomes that serve both technical teams and business stakeholders.
Applying Review Templates standards reduces system failures, accelerates delivery, and provides the governance evidence required by enterprise clients, regulators like BSP, and certification bodies like ISO. Top technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) treat these standards as competitive differentiators, not compliance overhead.
📖 Detailed Explanation
Architecture governance provides the structures, processes, and accountability mechanisms that ensure architecture decisions are made consistently, communicated effectively, and implemented faithfully across the organization.
Industry Context: Governance implemented via Architecture Review Boards, decision records, governance dashboards, and architecture maturity assessments.
Relevance to Philippine Financial Services: Organizations operating under BSP supervision must demonstrate mature architecture governance practices during technology examinations. The BSP Technology Supervision Group evaluates documentation quality, process maturity, and evidence of systematic practice — all of which are addressed by the standards in this section.
Alignment to Global Standards: The practices documented here are aligned to frameworks used by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and the world's leading consulting firms (McKinsey Digital, Deloitte Technology, Accenture Technology). They represent the current industry consensus on best practices rather than any single vendor's approach.
Engineering Perspective: For engineers, Review Templates provides concrete patterns and anti-patterns that prevent common mistakes and accelerate development by providing proven solutions to recurring problems. Rather than rediscovering what doesn't work, teams can apply battle-tested approaches with known trade-offs.
Architecture Perspective: For architects, Review Templates provides the design vocabulary, decision frameworks, and governance artifacts needed to make and communicate complex technical decisions clearly and consistently.
Business Perspective: For business stakeholders, Review Templates provides assurance that technology investments are aligned to industry standards, reducing the risk of expensive rework, regulatory findings, and system failures that impact customers and revenue.
📈 Architecture Diagram
flowchart LR
A["Review Templates
Concept"] --> B["Principles
& Standards"]
B --> C["Design
Decisions"]
C --> D["Implementation
Patterns"]
D --> E["Governance
Checkpoints"]
E --> F["Validation
& Evidence"]
F -.->|"Feedback Loop"| A
style A fill:#1e293b,color:#f8fafc
style F fill:#052e16,color:#4ade80
Lifecycle of Review Templates: from concept through principles, design decisions, implementation patterns, governance checkpoints, and validation — with feedback loops for continuous improvement.
🌎 Real-World Examples
ING pioneered the Spotify Squad/Tribe/Guild model in banking. Their Architecture Guild (200+ members globally) maintains a Technology Radar, approves pattern additions to the architecture library, and sets NFR standards for all 350+ squads. Guild decisions are recorded as ADRs in Confluence and reviewed by the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) during operational resilience examinations.
✓ Result: Architecture consistency across 38-country operations; DNB resilience review 2023 rated governance 'exemplary'
Thoughtworks' 'Architecture Advice Process' empowers any engineer to make architecture decisions if they consult the right stakeholders — no central bottleneck. Technical Principals are embedded in delivery teams, not siloed. All decisions are documented as Architecture Decision Records using their own MADR format. Their Technology Radar (bi-annual) guides architecture choices across 50+ countries.
✓ Result: Client architecture maturity improves from Level 2 to Level 4 (TOGAF ACAT) within 18 months of engagement
Zalando's Platform Engineering model gives 3,000+ engineers full autonomy within published architecture boundaries. Stream-aligned teams consume self-service cloud capabilities from platform teams. An Architecture Council reviews cross-cutting concerns. All ADRs are transparent and accessible in GitHub Enterprise. Deployment frequency exceeds 1,000 per day.
✓ Result: 500+ microservices; architecture rework incidents reduced 71% after Platform Engineering adoption
McKinsey's Technology Transformation practice maintains a global Architecture Pattern Board with 40+ principal architects reviewing pattern additions. Pattern submissions require 2 independent reviews, documented trade-offs, and at least 1 production implementation reference. This lightweight ARB model is what this library is designed to emulate for Ascendion clients.
✓ Result: Engagement teams using Pattern Board references complete initial design phases 40% faster with 25% fewer rework cycles
🌟 Core Principles
Every aspect of review templates must be deliberately designed, not discovered after deployment. Document design decisions as ADRs with explicit rationale.
Apply review templates practices consistently across all systems. Inconsistent application creates governance blind spots and makes incident investigation unpredictable.
Review Templates practices must demonstrably contribute to business outcomes: reduced downtime, faster delivery, lower operational cost, or improved compliance posture.
Quality of review templates implementation must be measurable. Define specific metrics and collect evidence continuously — not only at audit or review time.
Standards for review templates evolve as technology and threat landscapes change. Schedule quarterly reviews of applicable standards and update practices accordingly.
⚙️ Implementation Steps
Current State Assessment
Document the current state of review templates practice: what is implemented, what is missing, what is inconsistent across teams. Use the governance/scorecards section for a structured assessment framework.
Gap Analysis Against Standards
Compare current state against the standards in this section and applicable frameworks (TOGAF 9.2 Architecture Governance Framework, COBIT 2019). Prioritize gaps by business impact and remediation effort.
Design the Target State
Define the target review templates state: which patterns will be adopted, which anti-patterns eliminated, which governance mechanisms introduced. Express as a time-bound roadmap.
Incremental Implementation
Implement review templates improvements incrementally: pilot with one team or system, measure outcomes, refine the approach, then expand. Avoid big-bang transformations.
Validate and Iterate
Measure the impact of implemented changes against defined success criteria. Incorporate lessons learned into the practice standards. Contribute improvements back to this library.
✅ Governance Checkpoints
| Checkpoint | Owner | Gate Criteria | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Current State Documented | Solution Architect | Review Templates current state assessment completed and reviewed | Required |
| Gap Analysis Reviewed | Architecture Review Board | Gap analysis reviewed and prioritization approved | Required |
| Implementation Plan Approved | Enterprise Architect | Target state and roadmap approved by ARB | Required |
| Quality Metrics Defined | Solution Architect | Measurable success criteria defined for review templates improvements | Required |
◈ Recommended Patterns
✦ Reference Architecture Adoption
Start from an established reference architecture for review templates rather than designing from scratch. Adapt to organizational context rather than rebuilding proven foundations.
✦ Pattern Library Contribution
When your team solves a recurring review templates problem with a novel approach, document it as a pattern for the library. This compounds organizational knowledge over time.
✦ Fitness Function Testing
Encode review templates standards as automated architectural fitness functions — tests that run in CI/CD and fail builds when standards are violated. This makes governance continuous rather than periodic.
⛔ Anti-Patterns to Avoid
⛔ Standards Theater
Documenting review templates standards in architecture policies that no one reads and no one enforces. Standards without automated validation or governance gates are not operational standards.
⛔ Copy-Paste Architecture
Adopting another organization's review templates patterns wholesale without adapting to organizational context, team capability, or regulatory environment. Always adapt; never just copy.
🤖 AI Augmentation Extensions
LLM agents analyze design documents against review templates standards, generating structured gap reports with cited evidence and suggested remediation approaches.
This section is optimized for vector ingestion into an AI-powered architecture assistant. Semantic search enables architects to retrieve relevant review templates guidance through natural language queries.
🔗 Related Sections
📚 References & Further Reading
- TOGAF 9.2 Architecture Governance Framework↗ opengroup.org
- COBIT 2019↗ isaca.org
- ISO/IEC 42010↗ iso.org
- IT Governance — Weill & Ross↗ Amazon
- Documenting Software Architectures — Bass, Clements, Kazman↗ Amazon
- Building Evolutionary Architectures — Ford, Parsons, Kua↗ O'Reilly