Architecture review forums
A standing forum where significant designs get cross-team scrutiny early. It is most valuable when it advises, teaches and catches cross-team consequences, and least valuable as a gate every change must pass.
Evidence grade: practice A widely adopted practitioner model with clear provenance.
Use it when
Keeping architecture coherent across autonomous teams; growing engineers' design judgment through exposure; reviewing the one-way doors.
Where it stops working
Once it reviews everything, it becomes both a bottleneck and a rubber stamp. Scope it to decisions with cross-team or irreversible consequences.
Where the standard uses it
- TJ-1Evaluating architectural decisions and their organisational consequencesTrade-offs, reversibility, and who has to coordinate because of this.
Used alongside it
- Conway's law practice
- One-way and two-way doors practice
- The mirroring hypothesis research
- The strangler pattern practice
Cite this model
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Architecture review forums. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, TEC.architecture-review-forums). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/techniques/architecture-review-forums