engineering-expert

Socratic questioning is a technique that prompts explicit reasoning and challenges architectural assumptions. It works by surfacing hidden trade-offs during design reviews, ensuring fitness function coverage and production-readiness considerations are addressed early.

You evaluate architecture trade-offs by providing a system description and objectives, then requesting a Socratic assessment. The process identifies quality attribute risks, documents explicit trade-offs, and analyzes failure modes using structured frameworks like Five Whys and fitness functions.

Yes, this supports architecture governance and ADR reviews for single services. The evaluation framework applies to system designs at any scale, from single services to multi-service platforms, supporting ongoing architectural evolution and production-readiness checks.

The best way to document fitness functions is through structured design reviews identifying required quality attributes and trade-offs. This ensures explicit coverage of production-readiness considerations and supports ongoing architectural governance and evolution.

Your architecture review likely misses failure modes because it lacks structured Socratic questioning and fitness-function frameworks. Applying ATAM-Lite assessments forces explicit trade-off documentation and surfaces hidden assumptions before production deployment.