Technical Architecture Checklist

Purpose: This checklist helps you stress-test your technical architecture before you hit scale. Use it during early design, pre-launch reviews, and before major growth milestones.

1. How to Use This Checklist

1. Review each category with your engineering lead / architect.
2. For every item, mark:
   • Done / sufficient
   • Partially done / needs review
   • Not done / risk
3. At the end, score each category from 1–5 and capture gaps in the scorecard.
4. Revisit this document:
   • Before MVP launch
   • Before/after big fundraising rounds
   • When hiring new tech leadership
   • Before major infra or product changes

2. Core Architecture Design

Before you build, ask: Can your tech decisions survive growth?

2.1 Architecture Strategy

• System design accommodates future scale (horizontal vs. vertical scaling is explicitly chosen and documented)
• Monolith vs. microservices trade-offs are clearly documented and justified
• Clear separation of concerns across layers (e.g., UI, business logic, data, infra)
• Critical paths and dependencies are mapped (e.g., sequence diagrams, architecture diagrams)
• Event-driven or pub/sub patterns are considered where appropriate
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous design choices are made deliberately and documented

Ask yourself: Could someone outside your team walk through the system diagram and understand how it works within 30 minutes?

3. Infrastructure & Hosting

Where you run your code matters more than you think.

3.1 Platform & Provisioning

• Chosen cloud provider aligns with product and compliance goals (AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.)
• Infrastructure-as-code (e.g., Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation) is in place for all environments
• Environments (dev / stage / prod) are reproducible from code

3.2 Reliability & Scalability

• Auto-scaling is configured for critical services
• Load balancing is in place to handle traffic spikes
• Failover strategy exists (multi-AZ / multi-region where needed)
• Environment parity: dev/stage/prod environments mirror each other closely (configuration, dependencies, versions)
• Containerized deployment (Docker, Kubernetes, ECS, etc.) is used appropriately

Ask yourself: If a key infra person left, could you still spin up a full environment in under 30 minutes?

4. Database Architecture

Not just where your data lives — how it flows.

4.1 Data Modeling & Structure

• Normalization vs. denormalization trade-offs are consciously made and documented
• Primary and foreign key relationships are clearly defined
• Soft-delete vs. hard-delete behavior is standardized and consistent

4.2 Scalability & Resilience

• Read/write scaling strategies are in place (replication, read replicas, sharding, partitioning, etc.)
• Backup and disaster recovery plans exist and have been tested with restore drills
• DB migrations are automated, version-controlled, and safe to roll back
• Indexing strategy is optimized for current and anticipated query patterns
• Long-running queries are monitored and regularly reviewed

Ask yourself: Is your database a hidden bottleneck waiting to happen?

5. APIs & Integrations

Your product doesn’t live in isolation.

5.1 API Design & Lifecycle

• API versioning strategy is in place (e.g., /v1, /v2 or header-based)
• Internal vs. external API boundaries are well-defined and documented
• Clear API contracts / schemas exist (e.g., OpenAPI/Swagger, gRPC proto files)

5.2 Stability & Fault-Tolerance

• Rate-limiting and throttling are enforced where appropriate
• Secure authentication and authorization (OAuth2, JWT, session tokens, etc.) are implemented correctly
• Timeouts, retries, and circuit breakers are implemented for external integrations
• Webhooks and callbacks are validated, idempotent, and safely retried

Ask yourself: If a partner’s API fails for a day, does your product collapse or degrade gracefully?

6. Security (Application & Infrastructure)

Security is not a feature — it’s a baseline.

6.1 Application Security

• Authentication flows are hardened (MFA where appropriate, secure password policies, session handling)
• Authorization model is clearly defined (RBAC/ABAC) and enforced server-side
• Input validation and output encoding are in place to mitigate common attacks (XSS, SQLi, CSRF, etc.)
• Secrets (API keys, credentials, tokens) are stored in a secure secrets manager, not in code or config files

6.2 Infrastructure & Operational Security

• Least-privilege access is enforced (IAM roles, security groups, firewall rules)
• Regular security updates/patching process exists for OS, runtime, and dependencies
• Vulnerability scanning and dependency checks (SCA) are integrated into CI/CD
• Centralized audit logs exist for security-relevant events (logins, permission changes, access to sensitive data)

Ask yourself: Would you be comfortable walking an auditor through your security model and evidence?

7. Performance & Observability

You can’t fix what you don’t see.

7.1 Monitoring & Alerting

• Real-time monitoring with alerts is in place (e.g., Prometheus, Datadog, CloudWatch)
• Log aggregation with searchability (ELK, Loki, Cloud Logging, etc.) is set up
• Tracing is configured for distributed systems (Jaeger, OpenTelemetry, X-Ray, etc.)

7.2 Performance Management

• Baseline performance metrics are defined and documented (latency, throughput, error rates, SLOs)
• Dashboards exist for critical user flows and services
• Bottlenecks are identified proactively via load tests, not after incidents
• Capacity planning is reviewed periodically

Ask yourself: Would you know in under 5 minutes if your app went down or degraded significantly?

8. DevOps & CI/CD

Shipping should be boring — in the best way.

8.1 Build & Test Automation

• Automated testing is integrated into every PR (unit, integration, and smoke tests at minimum)
• Static analysis / linting runs automatically in CI
• Test coverage is tracked and target thresholds are agreed upon

8.2 Deployment & Release Management

• One-click (or one-command) deployment to each environment is available
• Rollback plans are clearly documented and tested regularly
• Staging environment is production-like (data shape, infra, config)
• Canary or blue-green deployment strategy is implemented where risk justifies the complexity
• Release notes or change logs are maintained for each deploy

Ask yourself: Are deploys nerve-wracking “all-hands events” or uneventful routine operations?

9. Compliance & Risk

Not just for regulated industries — good hygiene from day one matters.

9.1 Data & Privacy

• Data residency concerns are addressed (e.g., EU, Canada, region-specific storage)
• Applicable regulations (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, etc.) are identified and mapped to controls
• Data retention and deletion policies are defined and implemented
• Logging and privacy policies exist and are communicated internally

9.2 Governance & Vendor Risk

• Access to sensitive data is auditable and limited on a need-to-know basis
• Vendor and third-party risk is reviewed at least annually
• SLAs with critical vendors are documented and monitored
• Incident response playbook exists (who does what, in what order, with what communication plan)

Ask yourself: Would your practices hold up in a lawsuit, security audit, or investor due diligence?

10. Final Readiness Scorecard

Score each section from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). Be honest — this is for yourself, not for slides.

Tip: Any category scoring ≤ 3 should have clear follow-up actions and owners.

11. Living Document & Next Steps

This checklist should live and evolve with your team. Treat it as part of your architecture governance, not a one-time exercise.

Revisit it:

• Before major product launches
• Before/after large customer onboardings
• During quarterly or semi-annual technical reviews
• When making significant architectural changes (e.g., moving to microservices, multi-region, new DB tech)

If something feels fragile, unclear, or undocumented — fix it now, not when you’re on fire.

Appendix: What Changed in Version 1.1 (Compared to Previous Draft)

• Added structured metadata (title, author, version, last_updated, status).
• Converted checklist items from plain code blocks to semantic checklists for better usability.
• Introduced a dedicated Security section to align with the Final Readiness Scorecard categories.
• Added “How to Use This Checklist” and “Living Document & Next Steps” sections for clearer guidance.
• Improved heading hierarchy and spacing for readability and better Markdown parser compatibility.
• Reworked the Final Readiness Scorecard into a table for easier scoring and review.
• Standardized callouts (Ask yourself) for consistent visual cues and reflection prompts.