Services
The type of architecture support being provided: evaluate, document, design, transition, assess scalability, test feasibility, prototype, or create a proof of concept.
Fractional Architecture as a Service
Senior architecture judgment for consequential technology decisions.
Resolving Architecture helps CTOs, founders, engineering leaders, and architecture teams evaluate, document, design, and govern architecture decisions without hiring a full-time architect or creating heavyweight process.
Use fractional architecture support when modernization, scaling, integration, platform direction, AI-assisted development, security, data, or application architecture decisions need clearer context, trade-offs, and next steps.
25+ years
Principal-level architecture and software delivery experience across startups, growth-stage companies, enterprise systems, regulated environments, integration platforms, and decentralized systems.
Fractional
Senior architecture support without defaulting to a full-time hire, architecture bureaucracy, open-ended staff augmentation, or unmanaged advisory access.
Meridian-backed
Consulting can be paired with Meridian to capture architecture context, decisions, risks, guardrails, and implementation alignment over time.
Architecture as a Service
Fractional architecture leadership for teams that need clarity without ceremony.
Many teams reach a point where architecture decisions become too important to leave implicit, but the organization is not ready for a full architecture department, enterprise governance program, or permanent chief architect.
Fractional Architecture as a Service fills that gap with scoped senior architecture support: evaluate the situation, clarify the decision, expose trade-offs, document rationale, recommend practical next steps, and help teams preserve architectural intent.
The goal is not to slow delivery. The goal is to keep delivery aligned with decisions that technical and business leaders can understand, own, and revisit.
How support is scoped
Services, domains, and stacks make architecture work concrete.
Resolving Architecture frames consulting around the type of support needed, the architecture concern being addressed, and the technology context where the decision will be implemented.
Domains
The architecture concern being addressed: application architecture, integration, modernization, platform, data, security, governance, architecture drift, scalability, or decentralization.
Stacks
The technology grouping that makes the work concrete: Java / Spring / RDBMS, TypeScript / React / API Backend, Cloud-Native / API / Managed Database, Event-Driven / Messaging, and similar stacks.
Example: Evaluate Application Architecture for a Java / Spring / RDBMS stack.
In that example, Evaluate is the service, Application Architecture is the domain, and Java / Spring / RDBMS is the stack.
Services
Scoped architecture services that can stand alone or support an ongoing fractional architecture relationship.
Each service is designed to create useful architecture clarity without turning into unmanaged implementation delivery or indefinite consulting.
Evaluate
Full architecture evaluation for a system, product, platform, or architecture area against goals, constraints, risks, future needs, and current implementation reality.
Evaluate Intermediate
Focused review of a narrower change, decision, feature, integration, or implementation concern against an existing architecture baseline or known direction.
Document
Architecture documentation support for capturing decisions, context, diagrams, assumptions, constraints, risks, and operating knowledge in a maintainable structure.
Design
Architecture design support for shaping application, integration, platform, data, security, enterprise, or solution architecture direction.
Transition
Architecture transition planning for moving from current state to desired future state through practical sequencing, modernization strategy, and risk reduction.
Scalability
Scalability assessment and planning for systems facing growth in users, data, transactions, teams, integrations, operations, or complexity.
Feasibility
Feasibility assessment for determining whether an architecture option, product direction, integration, platform move, or modernization path is realistic.
Prototype and Proof of Concept
Evidence-producing technical exploration for architecture assumptions, integration behavior, platform choices, decentralized systems, and high-impact uncertainties.
Decentralization
Specialized architecture support for distributed trust, decentralized identity, verification, peer-to-peer communication, cryptographic systems, and reduced central control points.
Domains
Architecture domains where fractional support is most useful.
Resolving Architecture focuses on domains where technical decisions affect delivery, scale, security, modernization, team ownership, product direction, or long-term maintainability.
- Application Architecture: structure, boundaries, responsibilities, and implementation alignment.
- Architecture Decisions: consequential decisions, rationale, ownership, alternatives, and trade-offs.
- Lightweight Governance: enough structure to preserve clarity without bureaucracy.
- Architecture Drift: detecting when implementation moves away from accepted architectural intent.
- Integration Architecture: APIs, events, workflows, third-party systems, and coupling risks.
- Modernization: current-state understanding, target direction, sequencing, and transition risk.
- Scalability: growth limits across users, data, transactions, teams, platforms, and operations.
- Platform Architecture: infrastructure, delivery models, runtime platforms, and operational boundaries.
- Data Architecture: ownership, movement, reporting, quality, persistence, and integration concerns.
- Security Architecture: identity, access, trust boundaries, data classification, and risk alignment.
- AI-Assisted Development: guardrails for faster implementation that still respects architecture intent.
- Decentralization: trust, identity, verification, resilience, and distributed systems trade-offs.
Common stacks
Stack-aware architecture support grounded in real implementation patterns.
Architecture evaluation gets more useful when it accounts for the technology environment where the decision will actually be implemented.
Java / Spring / RDBMS
Application architecture evaluation, decision capture, modernization pressure, scalability concerns, dependency boundaries, and lightweight governance.
AI-Assisted Development / Existing Application Architecture
Architecture guardrails for teams using code generation where implementation can move faster than shared understanding, decision context, or review discipline.
TypeScript / React / API Backend
Product application architecture support for frontend/backend boundaries, API ownership, user workflow complexity, and architecture decision visibility.
Node.js or Python / API / PostgreSQL
Common startup and growth-stage backend patterns where speed, data ownership, integrations, service boundaries, and scaling assumptions often need review.
Cloud-Native / API / Managed Database
Architecture support for teams maturing infrastructure, operational expectations, reliability, deployment models, platform boundaries, and managed service trade-offs.
Kubernetes / Services / Managed Database
Review and planning for teams where service boundaries, platform operations, runtime complexity, observability, and ownership models are becoming material.
Event-Driven / Kafka or Managed Messaging
Integration and scalability support where consistency, coupling, ownership, event design, operational readiness, and failure behavior require careful trade-off analysis.
Serverless / Event-Driven / Managed Cloud Services
Feasibility and design support for teams weighing cost, observability, coupling, deployment, vendor dependency, and operational complexity.
Monolith, Modular Monolith, or Microservices
Modernization and transition guidance for teams deciding whether to preserve, modularize, separate, or redesign system boundaries.
SaaS / Multi-Tenant / RDBMS
Architecture review for tenant isolation, data boundaries, security, operational risk, scalability, product evolution, and governance.
Identity Provider / API / Application Authorization
Security architecture support for access control, ownership, compliance alignment, trust boundaries, identity flows, and application authorization decisions.
Decentralized Identity / Verifiable Credentials
Specialized evaluation, feasibility, prototype, and proof-of-concept support for trust, verification, credential exchange, and decentralized architecture concerns.
Meridian
Product-led architecture assistance for decisions that need to remain visible.
Meridian is Resolving Architecture’s product for structured architecture evaluation, decision capture, architecture baselines, lightweight governance, and implementation alignment.
Architecture consulting helps interpret, resolve, and communicate high-consequence decisions. Meridian helps preserve the context, rationale, risks, guardrails, and baseline after the consulting conversation ends.
Meridian assists; customer leaders decide. It supports CTOs, founders, architects, principal engineers, and engineering leaders without replacing their judgment.
Explore MeridianWhen to use Resolving Architecture
Use fractional architecture support when the decision is consequential but a full-time architecture role is premature.
Resolving Architecture is useful when your team has real architecture pressure but does not need generic consulting, staff augmentation, or a heavyweight architecture program.
- A Java / Spring application needs architecture evaluation before further investment.
- AI-assisted development is increasing concern about architecture drift.
- A monolith needs modernization planning without unnecessary rewrite risk.
- Scaling pressure is exposing unclear boundaries, data assumptions, or operational limits.
- Integration decisions are creating coupling, ownership, reliability, or data movement concerns.
- A cloud, serverless, event-driven, or managed-service direction needs feasibility review.
- Security, identity, authorization, data classification, or trust boundaries need architecture-level review.
- Architecture decisions exist, but rationale and guardrails are scattered or implicit.
- Leadership needs a senior architecture perspective before committing product or engineering resources.
Typical outputs
Clear architecture artifacts that make decisions easier to own and execute.
Engagements produce practical outputs for technical leaders, engineering teams, product leaders, executives, and Meridian workflows.
- Architecture evaluation summaries
- Application, integration, platform, data, security, or modernization findings
- Risk, constraint, assumption, dependency, and ownership maps
- Trade-off analysis for major architecture options
- Architecture decision records and decision backlogs
- Current-state and target-state architecture notes
- Modernization and transition roadmaps
- Scalability and growth-readiness assessments
- Feasibility, prototype, or proof-of-concept findings
- Implementation guardrails for engineering teams and AI-assisted development
- Stack-specific evaluation questions and architecture review criteria
Engagement options
Start small, then continue as fractional architecture support if the need is recurring.
Most work begins with a scoped evaluation, review, or planning engagement. If the architecture need continues, Resolving Architecture can provide fractional Architecture as a Service.
Architecture challenge review
A focused review for a specific architecture decision, risk, design concern, stakeholder disagreement, or implementation alignment question.
Best for: a senior second opinion before committing to a path.
Stack-aware architecture evaluation
A structured review of an architecture domain in the context of a specific stack, such as Java / Spring / RDBMS, TypeScript / React / API Backend, or Cloud-Native / Managed Database.
Best for: practical architecture findings grounded in real implementation constraints.
Architecture baseline and governance setup
Capture decisions, rationale, guardrails, review loops, and architecture context so important choices remain visible as implementation continues.
Best for: teams that need clarity without heavyweight governance.
Modernization and transition roadmap
Move from current state to target direction through practical sequencing, risk reduction, dependency awareness, and clear modernization trade-offs.
Best for: monolith evolution, platform migration, or architecture maturity planning.
AI architecture guardrails review
Review whether faster AI-assisted implementation is staying aligned with architecture decisions, boundaries, ownership models, reliability expectations, and accepted constraints.
Best for: teams using AI coding tools in existing applications.
Fractional Architecture as a Service
Ongoing senior architecture support for a defined cadence, decision backlog, product area, architecture roadmap, or Meridian-backed governance workflow.
Best for: CTOs, founders, and engineering leaders who need recurring architecture judgment without a full-time hire.
Boundaries
Architecture as a Service is not staff augmentation.
Resolving Architecture is designed for architecture evaluation, decision support, documentation, design guidance, transition planning, scalability assessment, feasibility review, and selective prototype or proof-of-concept work.
It does not default to open-ended implementation delivery, outsourced CTO responsibility, unlimited advisory access, production operations, customer-specific product customization, or enterprise transformation programs.
The operating principle is simple: provide senior architecture support where judgment matters while preserving customer decision authority.
Representative experience
Architecture decisions resolved across complex technology environments.
Resolving Architecture draws on experience across fintech, healthcare, enterprise integration, retail modernization, national identity, education technology, scalability, data processing, product architecture, and decentralized systems.
The recurring pattern is turning architectural uncertainty into practical decisions, documented trade-offs, transition paths, and implementation guardrails.
View representative engagementsWhat happens next
A low-friction path from architecture concern to useful output.
The first step is a conversation about the architecture decision, risk, stack, domain, or transition in front of you. From there, the work is shaped around the smallest useful engagement that creates clarity.
- 1. Discuss the challenge: clarify business context, technical concern, stakeholders, stack, and urgency.
- 2. Frame the service and domain: determine whether this is evaluation, documentation, design, transition, scalability, feasibility, prototype, proof-of-concept, or decentralization work.
- 3. Identify the stack: name the technology context when it affects risks, trade-offs, or evaluation criteria.
- 4. Produce useful outputs: deliver findings, decision records, risk summaries, roadmap guidance, guardrails, or validation results.
- 5. Decide the follow-up model: stop after the scoped engagement or continue with fractional architecture support if the need is recurring.
Start with the architecture concern
Bring fractional architecture judgment to your next consequential technology decision.
If your team is facing modernization risk, scaling pressure, AI-assisted development drift, scattered decision context, integration complexity, or uncertainty around a common technology stack, Resolving Architecture can help.