Architecture Design Philosophy
A pragmatic architecture methodology for lean startup teams
10 battle-tested principles distilled from 20 years of experience. Not textbook theory — lessons learned from real-world challenges.
Design Philosophy
Stability First
Choose production-ready, stable solutions (e.g., managed cloud services). Small teams cannot afford to spend time on solution stability issues.
Stand on Giants' Shoulders
Reference industry best practices. You're not the first to face this problem — leverage others' experience to go further.
Cost-Effectiveness First
Expensive solutions are the enemy of ROI. Use pay-per-use serverless in MVP phase, switch to fixed services when traffic is predictable.
Documentation First, Standards First
All scenarios should be considered before coding begins, not researched on the fly.
Testing Has Veto Power
No product ships without tests. Every change, even minor dependency updates, requires testing.
New Tech Must Be Targeted
New technology must solve a specific problem. Full replacement is nearly impossible. Research and deployment must have clear goals.
Redundant Monitoring
Never rely on a single monitoring channel — auto-call + auto-message. Production incidents happen more than expected; ensure minimal impact.
High Availability Is a Feature
HA cannot stay theoretical. Make it understandable to non-technical stakeholders and visibly part of the product.
Proactive Communication When Issues Arise
Unexpected things will happen. Communicate proactively — don't hide or sugarcoat. Conduct proper post-mortems.
Post-Mortem Is the Final Step
Development without reflection isn't development. A project without retrospective isn't a project.
Project Architecture Cases
Not just theory — real projects proving the design philosophy
InterviewPass
100% Serverless Architecture
- ✓Pay-per-use, zero idle cost
- ✓AWS managed services, zero ops
- ✓Kinesis+Lambda event-driven
Iqidao
7-Year Architecture EvolutionAWS Official Case Study · Complete Monolith-to-Microservices Evolution
Phase 1: Monolith
Early startup stage — monolithic app + self-built video CDN, rapid launch to validate business
Phase 2: Distributed
After business growth, purchased professional video CDN, split monolith into distributed architecture
Phase 3: Service-Oriented
Evolved to service-oriented architecture, 99.9% availability, featured as AWS official case study
Hands-on experience with all three common architecture patterns: monolith, distributed, and service-oriented