The Backend Architect's Checklist
Twenty questions to work through before finalising a backend stack decision. Each one surfaces a gap that otherwise shows up in production. Subscribe and get v0.1 immediately, plus quarterly updates as the checklist evolves.
What's inside v0.1
Data & Persistence
Consistency model, read/write ratio, access patterns, growth forecasts, RPO/RTO. Five questions that decide your primary store.
Traffic & Protocol
Sync vs async, REST/gRPC/GraphQL/WebSockets, idempotency, rate limiting, caching layer. Five questions that shape your API surface.
Reliability & Observability
SLOs, outage detection, metrics/logs/traces, deploy strategy, circuit breakers. Five questions that decide how you sleep at night.
Security & Operations
Auth / token lifetimes, secrets management, PII handling, dependency cadence, team ownership. Five questions about the long-term maintenance shape.
What this checklist isn't
- Not a list of “best practices” divorced from context.
- Not exhaustive — every team will have domain-specific items to add.
- Not a replacement for judgement. The questions force a conversation; the answers still need a human.
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