Architectural Drift and How Decisions Age

This generated surface maps a learner-facing curriculum unit to its canonical source routes.

Curriculum surface

• Open learner-facing unit
• Curriculum path: content/curriculum/architecture/semester-07-architecture-ddd/module-05-architecture-decision-records-reviews/concepts/cluster-05-architecture-decisions-over-time/14-architectural-drift-and-how-decisions-age-primary.md
• App: architecture
• Semester: semester-07-architecture-ddd
• Module: module-05-architecture-decision-records-reviews
• Unit kind: concept
• Curation level: module_curated

Learning objectives

• Explain Architectural Drift and How Decisions Age as part of an architecture feedback loop involving decisions, review, and long-term consequences.
• Use Architectural Drift and How Decisions Age to make architecture work inspectable: what was decided, why, what risks remain, and how success will be measured.
• Use fundamentals-of-software-architecture, just-enough-software-architecture to connect the learner explanation to ADRs, review methods, and architectural fitness functions.

Prerequisites

• Comfort with architecture tradeoffs, modular patterns, DDD boundaries, and API design decisions from the earlier semester modules.

Source books

• fundamentals-of-software-architecture
• just-enough-software-architecture

Source routes

Fundamentals Of Software Architecture

• /books/fundamentals-of-software-architecture via Fundamentals: Fitness functions, Fundamentals: Measuring architecture characteristics

Just Enough Software Architecture

• /books/just-enough-software-architecture via Just Enough: Architectural mismatch, Just Enough: Challenges (part 1)

Supporting curriculum routes

No supporting curriculum routes linked yet.

External enrichment

• ADR GitHub Organization (official_docs_companion) - Useful when the learner needs concrete ADR templates and ecosystem conventions rather than theory alone.
• SEI: Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method (official_docs_companion) - Provides the formal review-method background behind risk-driven architectural evaluation.

AI companion modes

• Explain simply
• Socratic tutor
• Challenge my understanding
• Diagnose my confusion
• Connect forward / backward

Source-of-truth note

This teaching unit is learner-facing guidance assembled from multiple canonical book routes. Use the listed source books as the primary conceptual spine for Architectural Drift and How Decisions Age, and treat outside material as supporting enrichment only.