Creating a design is the easy part. Reviewing it well — consistently, across every domain, with evidence behind each judgement — is what separates a strong architecture practice from the rest.
Without a standard, every review depends on who's in the room. A checklist ensures each solution is assessed against the same criteria, that evidence is captured, and that the outcome can be defended to a design authority — and it speeds reviews up.
Many designs pass the functional review and fail in production because the NFRs were never pinned down. Turn expectations into measurable targets: performance, availability, recoverability, observability and cost.
Mark each item Pass, Partial, Fail or N/A with evidence, then let a weighted scorecard roll them into a rating and a recommendation — approve, approve with conditions, or rework.
Every fail or partial flows into a risk register; every significant choice becomes an architecture decision record. The review report then communicates the recommendation, the evidence and the conditions.
The Architecture Review Kit is a TOGAF-aligned set of editable templates — checklist, solution and NFR templates, weighted scorecard, risk register, decision log and report — plus three fully worked examples.
