Architecture review checklist
What to prepare before an architecture review.
A practical checklist for modernization and AI programs where the first useful step is making decisions, risks, ownership, and missing information visible.
Prepare the review
Bring rough evidence before polished artifacts.
Before a core banking or digital banking review
- Current onboarding flow or platform sketch
- Systems of record and dependent channels
- Known cutover, reconciliation, and exception risks
- Decision to clarify: boundary, sequence, vendor, or operating owner
Before an integration modernization review
- BizTalk/ESB, API, event, Logic Apps, and Service Bus inventory
- Current contracts, retry paths, and reconciliation rules
- Synchronous vs asynchronous decisions that are still unclear
- Risks to name: coupling, idempotency, cutover, rollback
Before a payments modernization review
- Payment stream map and downstream consumers
- ISO 20022 mapping assumptions and operating-model questions
- Exception handling, auditability, and reconciliation needs
- Decision to clarify: migration sequence, contingency, owner
Before a healthcare integration review
- HL7/FHIR interfaces or data-exchange sketch
- Workflow, privacy, and data-quality constraints
- Known reliability or support issues
- Decision to clarify: boundary, owner, validation, recovery path
Before an AI production readiness review
- Prototype workflow, RAG sources, and retrieval freshness expectations
- Human review, confidence handling, evals, and quality signals
- Cost, latency, privacy, and fallback constraints
- Decision to clarify: production boundary and operating controls
Before a cloud modernization risk review
- Dependency map and target platform choices
- Kubernetes, serverless, AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud constraints
- Observability, rollback, support, cost, and release concerns
- Decision to clarify: sequencing, cutover, and ownership
Related reading
Planning a banking modernization?
Use this article to frame system boundaries, integration contracts, cutover, rollback, reconciliation, and ownership before a migration plan hardens.
Core banking modernization: architecture decisions before migration ->
Review path
Connect the checklist to a decision package.
Pair the checklist with the Core Banking & Digital Banking Architecture Review when the decision involves onboarding flows, commercial lending dependencies, payment streams, or cutover risk.
Next step
Use the checklist to frame the first conversation.
The goal is not to have perfect documents. It is to name the decision, constraints, and risks clearly enough to choose the right review.