This is the last lesson of K4. The Kladde is multi-tenant, rolled out in Azure and taken down again, documented, and checked by a person from your circle. Now you check your architecture yourself, with a checklist: the way an architecture review would check it. You do that alone or with colleagues; none of us grades the result, and there is no grade. The review does not check whether everything is perfect. No system after a course is. It asks whether you understand your architecture: whether you can show that it delivers what it promises; whether you know your decisions with their costs; whether you can find your way around your code when a place is picked at random; and whether you can say where you were wrong.

The lesson prepares you for every part of the review. Most of its four hours are exercises, and most of them can be done alone or with a second person who plays the role of the reviewers: best the person whose Kladde you checked in 4.9.6. They already know your work and know where they would ask.

How the architecture review runs

The review has four parts, and each has questions that you tick off on your checklist. The times are guidelines; only the demo has a fixed limit.

Part What happens Duration
1. Demo You show the running Kladde and the proofs from 4.9.1: isolation, restoring, cost per office. 15 minutes
2. Code reading Places in your repository are picked, also at random: “Explain this place.” about 15 minutes
3. Decisions You check three ADRs of your choice against the questions on the checklist: options, price and evidence. about 15 minutes
4. Questions across K4 Questions from all modules, at the end: a decision you would make differently today. about 15 minutes

Beforehand you prepare the following for the review, even if you do it alone:

  • the link to your repository and the tag architecture-review, which records the state the review reads (if the repository is private and colleagues read along, give them read access);
  • docs/README.md as the entry page, with the reading path from 4.9.5;
  • the review you wrote in 4.9.6, and the answered review of your work;
  • the draft of a new ADR as a pull request in draft status (Exercise 3).

The checklist is your rubric: one row per question, one piece of evidence per answer, and a row stays open as long as you have no evidence. What the four parts aim at is stated in each section of this lesson: The demo backs things up with evidence, the code reading shows understanding instead of memorizing, the decisions show weighing, the questions across K4 show how far your knowledge reaches beyond your own Kladde.