GuideAdvanced
The Architect Craft
Learn the human and organizational craft of being an architect: not drawing the perfect diagram from an ivory tower, but enabling teams, communicating decisions, and aligning the organization's structure with the system's. The core idea of this guide is that architecture is made by people inside an organization, and that the architect's biggest lever isn't technical, it's social. You measure Conway's Law on a real case and apply the inverse maneuver to shape teams toward the architecture you want, communicate with the C4 model (the four zoom levels of a diagram) and use the ADR as a communication piece, lead without formal authority by sustaining the conversations that hold the architecture up, and translate business goals into quality attributes to explain the trade-off to a non-technical stakeholder. You also work through designing for change without falling into over-engineering, and documenting in a way that survives time and onboarding. What's quantifiable — communication paths, bus factor, team-module coupling — is executed in Python, not asserted from memory. You work on Mercado and its five-squad organization, and close by acting as its architect for a real business change.
- 64
- lessons
- 8
- modules
- English · Spanish
- available in
- Yes
- certificate
- Free
- access
Outcomes
What you'll be able to do
- Understand what an architect actually does: enable and communicate, not draw the perfect diagram from an ivory tower or design everything upfront (BDUF)
- Measure Conway's Law on a real case (system structure mirrors organizational communication structure) and apply the inverse maneuver to shape teams
- Communicate architecture with the C4 model (Context/Container/Component/Code), choosing the right diagram for each audience, and use the ADR as a communication piece
- Lead without formal authority: influence instead of command, sustain the load-bearing conversations that hold architecture together, and avoid becoming the team's bottleneck
- Translate business goals into quality attributes (the -ilities) and explain the trade-off to a non-technical stakeholder in their own language
- Design for change, not permanence: keep options open, apply sacrificial architecture, and avoid both over- and under-engineering
- Document in a way that survives: living documentation, the C4 + ADR + arc42 combo, docs-as-code, and reducing bus factor by sharing knowledge
- Run a capstone project: act as Mercado's architect for a real business change — deriving quality attributes, applying inverse Conway, and communicating with C4 + ADR
Before you start
What you need to bring
It's for you if...
- Senior developers making the jump to architect or tech lead, without formal authority over the team
- Architects who already design well but need to improve how they communicate and get their decisions adopted
- Tech leads who need to align team structure with the architecture they're trying to achieve
- People who need to translate business goals into technical decisions for non-technical stakeholders
Requirements and materials
- Experience designing or leading technical decisions within a development team
- Recommended (not required): the Architecture Decisions and Trade-offs Guide completed, since here the ADR is used as a communication tool and its mechanics aren't re-taught
- Python to run the guide's organizational metrics (communication paths, bus factor, team-module coupling)
Content
The syllabus, module by module
Open any of them to see its lessons.
- 1. Module introduction: you ship your org chart
- 2. You ship your org chart: the law, measured
- 3. The monolith is your first org chart
- 4. The cost of coordination
- 5. The modules that cross team boundaries
- 6. The inverse Conway maneuver
- 7. Team topologies
- 8. Project: redesign Mercado's organization for a new capability
- 1. Module introduction: communicate to be understood, not to archive
- 2. The C4 model: four levels of zoom
- 3. Context and Container: the two maps you almost always need
- 4. Component and Code: when to go down and when to stop
- 5. The right diagram for the audience
- 6. The ADR as communication: the why that travels through time
- 7. Avoiding the 500-page document and the spaghetti diagram
- 8. Project: communicate Mercado's architecture for two audiences
- 1. Module introduction: leading without being able to command
- 2. Influence instead of mandate
- 3. Borrowed authority: the trust account
- 4. Guardrails instead of gates
- 5. Disagree and commit
- 6. The conversations that hold up the architecture
- 7. Building technical consensus
- 8. Project: get 5 squads to adopt a standard
- 1. Module introduction: from the business's wish to the quality attribute
- 2. From the business goal to the quality attribute
- 3. The quality attribute scenario: making the vague measurable
- 4. Architecturally significant requirements: the signal and the noise
- 5. The implicit attributes nobody asked for
- 6. Speaking the stakeholder's language
- 7. Knowing how to say no (and the cost of yes)
- 8. Project: derive Mercado's quality attributes for a launch
- 1. Capstone presentation: the craft as one single movement
- 2. Frame the role and the assignment
- 3. Derive the quality attributes from the goal
- 4. Apply the inverse Conway maneuver
- 5. Produce the C4 and the ADR
- 6. Lead the rollout without authority
- 7. Plan the evolution and the documentation
- 8. Project: be Mercado's architect facing the change
Common questions
What people usually ask
No limit. It's a free guide: come in whenever you like, as often as you like.
No. Modules run from easier to harder, but you can jump to the one you need. Progress is saved per lesson.
Whatever is needed is listed under “What you need to bring”, above. If nothing is listed there, you can start from zero.
In the Club's WhatsApp group, and every two weeks there's a live with an instructor where questions get worked through.
Yes. It's issued automatically once you finish every lesson, with a verifiable code you can share on LinkedIn.
Start whenever you like
What students say
These reviews are from enrolled students who completed at least 50% of the course. We moderate reviews only on content grounds (spam, offensive language, personal data), never for being critical or negative.
No approved reviews yet.
Be the first to share your experience!