I usually look at
- Service and module boundaries
- Data ownership and the data model
- Coupling and integration points: APIs, events, third-party services
- Deployment topology, and how a change reaches production
- Queues and asynchronous work
- Failure modes
- Authentication, authorization and tenant separation
- Infrastructure cost, and where developer time goes
- Observability
- Test boundaries
- AI and agent components, where there are any
- What the team finds hard to change, from the people who work on it
Engagements
You get
- A written review with findings, priorities, proposed changes and rough implementation effort
- Diagrams of the system as it is, and as the changes would leave it
Not included
- A security audit or penetration test (I note the risks I see)
- Line-by-line code style review
- Judgements about individual developers
Technical due diligence
For investors and acquirers, the same review works as technical due diligence before a deal, scoped the same way. The report is written for the people making the decision as well as for engineers.
- Architecture
- Whether the system can carry the growth in the plan, and where it will strain first.
- Dependencies
- Third-party services, licences and data the product relies on but does not own.
- Delivery
- How a change reaches production, and which parts depend on one person.
- Security and access
- Identity, access and tenant separation, as risks noted.
- Cost
- Infrastructure spend and developer time, and where either rises with scale.
- AI components
- Model and provider dependencies, what they cost, and what breaks if a provider changes.
Questions
What does a software architecture consultant do?
Looks at how a system is put together and helps the team decide how it should change: where the boundaries between parts sit, how data is modelled, how the system is deployed, and what each choice costs. In my case that is a written review, technical due diligence, or staying on to build the first changes with your team.
What is technical due diligence for a software company?
An assessment of the technology behind a company before someone invests in it or buys it: whether the system can carry the plan, what it depends on, where the risks and hidden costs are, and what fixing them would take. I scope it like a review: a focused review around €2,500, or a deep review from €5,000.
What does an architecture review cost?
A focused review of one system, or one question about it, is around €2,500. A deep review of a whole system, or several connected ones, starts at €5,000. Implementation support afterwards is quoted separately. How long a review takes depends on the size of the system, and is agreed with the scope.
Should we rewrite or refactor?
It depends on which parts are straining and why. A deep review sizes a rewrite against incremental change for your system, with the risk and rough cost of each, and sets out the order of steps for whichever path holds up.
Writing
Architecture review
Discuss a review
What you are building, what is going wrong, and roughly when. I answer within a couple of days.