Reminder: Please copy/paste the Zoom chat into the notes. If you miss it, this is saved along with the meeting recording, but having it here has benefits.
We know that a project of this size is faced with architectural decisions of various sizes, ranging from things scoped very narrowly, which impact only one or a few modules/teams, to platform-wide decisions impacting almost everyone. A one-size-fits all approach to making these decisions is unlikely to work well, and we've seen this already with the RFC process. Let's enumerate the types/sizes of decisions we make, then try to identify the applicable processes for each. If there are gaps, do we need to define additional processes or guidance for dev teams, and architects?
Types/sizes of technical decisions
Team/Module-specific
Process: ad-hoc/team-specific, sometimes with the help of SAs
Who: typically make internally by dev teams
Example(s):
Whether certain functionality is added to an existing module, or to a new module.
Technology choices - shared libraries, frameworks, etc., e.g. quartz timers, various npm packages
Storage layout, e.g. jsonb vs traditional relational tables, etc.
Problem-specific (needs to be defined better)
Process:
Who:
Example(s):
Pub-sub/Event-driven communications
Adoption of spring-way
Security-driven
Process:
Who: Security Team
Example(s):
...
Platform-level/Fundamental
Process: RFC process
Who: Technical Council
Example(s):
Eureka
Consortia support (ECS) and cross-tenant requests (possibly problem-specific)
UI architectural decisions
Process: A proposal or problem is brought to stripes-architecture, it's discussed, and a decision is made.
Who: Attendees of the stripes-architecture meeting
Example(s):
How GitHub actions are organized/implemented/used
Migration away from Yarn v1
Module inclusion into a release
Process: TCR process
Who: Technical Council
Example(s): ...
Officially Supported Technologies
Processes:
Delegation to other groups/teams (e.g. stripes-architecture, security team)
Discussion with stakeholders, esp. those for whom there are work/effort implications (e.g. DevOps, developers)
Technical Council dedicated discussion
Who: Technical Council w/ input from other groups
Examples: ...
Existing Processes
RFC process
Officially Supported Technologies (OST)
Decision Records
We have used this in the past as a decision making process, but more recently have used it only as a centralized log of decisions made via some other process, e.g. RFCs, etc.