Minimum Viable Architecture

Kind: approach

Layer: Evolution Principles

Record: architecture:minimum-viable-architecture

Severity: contextual

Scope: greenfield, early product

Canonical: Ontology

An approach in which a system starts with only the structure its current quality attributes require, and defers the rest until a force demands it.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Evolutionary Architecture and before Greenfield Development.

Requires

• Essential Quality Attributes

Reinforces

• Simplicity

Enables

• Early Delivery with Guardrails

Conflicts with

• Architecture Astronaut
• Over-Abstraction
• Speculative Generality

In tension with

• Future Scalability

Tensions

• Minimum Viable Architecture / Future Scalability

Violated by

• Speculative Generality

Refactored by

• Cleanup / Simplification
• Defer Generalization

Severity

• contextual

Category

• Architecture Review / Evolution / Governance Artifacts

Refactors

• Big-Upfront Frozen Architecture

Linked from

• Anti-patterns
• Architecture Review Evolution Governance
• Contracts / Interfaces / Compatibility
• Quality Attributes
• Severity levels
• The resolutions