Structured discovery
A deliberate requirements process that surfaces goals, constraints, data, owners, and measurable success metrics before selecting models, RAG, or tools.
Exam context: Skipping discovery and jumping to a stack is a trap.
See also: 6.1 Structured discovery
Non-functional requirements (NFRs)
Latency, cost, accuracy floors, risk, compliance, and similar constraints captured early alongside functional goals — not only in postmortems.
Exam context: NFRs belong in discovery with owners and measures.
See also: 6.1 Structured discovery
ADR (Architecture Decision Record)
A short record of context, decision, consequences, and rejected alternatives so trade-offs remain visible for later change.
Exam context: A single unexplained option without ADR memory is incomplete.
See also: 6.2 Communicate decisions
Trade-off communication
Presenting viable alternatives with costs and risks against agreed criteria, separating the recommendation from rejected options.
Exam context: Logo decks and secret decisions fail communication items.
See also: 6.2 Communicate decisions
SLA expectation alignment
Publishing stakeholder-agreed service levels and reviewing measured quality, latency, and cost so expectations stay synchronized with reality.
Exam context: Silent SLA drift without a feedback loop is a frequent failure.
See also: 6.3 Feedback & SLAs
Feedback cadence review
A scheduled forum that inspects quality, cost, and SLA adherence with evidence and turns actions into backlog and eval changes.
Exam context: Emoji-only reviews do not close the loop.
See also: 6.3 Feedback & SLAs
Implementation guidance pack
Architecture documentation that includes diagrams with rationale, interface contracts, named ownership, and failure runbooks — not pretty diagrams alone.
Exam context: Docs must enable builders and operators.
See also: 6.4 Document architectures
Failure runbook (LLM ops)
Operator steps for common Claude-system failures such as empty retrieval, tool errors, guardrail storms, and quality canary drops.
Exam context: Runbooks belong in the handoff pack.
See also: 6.4 Document architectures
Phase exit criteria
Explicit go/no-go conditions and artifacts that end discovery, design, handoff, or monitoring phases so the lifecycle stays accountable.
Exam context: Exit criteria make lifecycle transitions explicit.
See also: 6.5 Lifecycle phases
Lifecycle handoff ownership
Accepted transfer of build, ops, eval, and monitoring accountability — including live alerts — so architects do not vanish after the ADR.
Exam context: Missing monitoring/iteration ownership after design is the usual lifecycle gap.
See also: 6.5 Lifecycle phases