C2: Architecture Assessment

Challenge Info

⏱️ 30 min · 🏆 25 pts · 🤖 03-Architect, 10-Challenger, optional 04-Design · 📄 architecture, cost, reviews, and optional design artifacts

Objective

• Do now: Turn the requirements into an Azure architecture you can justify.
• Input: Approved requirements, SKU manifest, and current requirements review evidence.
• Output: Architecture assessment, cost evidence, separate architecture and cost review findings, and an optional design diagram.
• Required to move on: Service choices, WAF trade-offs, cost evidence, resolved architecture and cost findings, and team approval.
• Decisions now: Compute platform, data platform, network/security boundary, cost vs reliability trade-offs.
• Next: C3 turns this assessment and diagram into IaC and deployment work.

Your goal is not to collect every possible Azure option. Your goal is to choose a workable MVP architecture that fits the FreshConnect constraints and can survive later implementation and stakeholder scrutiny.

The Business Challenge

FreshConnect now has clear requirements, but Nordic Fresh Foods still needs a design that fits a small ops team, stays in EU regions, targets roughly 99.9% availability, and remains defensible inside a budget of about €500 per month. Every service choice must balance capability, cost, and operational complexity.

Your Tasks

1. Read the approved C1 requirements and SKU manifest. Identify decisions that still need architecture judgment.
2. Use 03-Architect to assess the workload against the Azure Well-Architected Framework and produce architecture, cost, and SKU evidence.
3. Select 10-Challenger for a comprehensive architecture review and a separate cost-feasibility review.
4. Resolve every blocking finding in the artifact owned by 03-Architect, then approve the architecture and cost evidence as a team.
5. Use 04-Design only when a diagram or ADR helps explain the approved design.
6. Save the artifacts at their required paths without merging the separate review evidence.

Key Decisions

• Which hosting model gives enough reliability and scale without creating an operations burden the team cannot sustain?
• Which data service best matches FreshConnect’s order and partner data while staying within budget and compliance boundaries?
• Which security controls must be first-class from day one, and which can be deferred without creating unacceptable risk?
• Where should you spend money for real business value, and where is the architecture starting to drift into over-engineering?

Deliverables

• agent-output/freshconnect/02-architecture-assessment.md
• agent-output/freshconnect/03-des-cost-estimate.md
• Current architecture and cost-feasibility review findings with no unresolved blocking findings.
• Optional 03-des-* diagram or ADR artifacts.
• Assessment includes recommended Azure services, key SKUs, WAF reasoning, risks, and cost assumptions.
• Any diagram shows services, relationships, data flows, security boundaries, and region placement.

Success Criteria

Focus	What good looks like	Evidence
Service selection	The chosen Azure services fit the requirements and team capability	Each major service has a short justification tied to a requirement or trade-off
WAF thinking	Reliability, security, cost, performance, and operations are visible in the reasoning	The assessment explains the main trade-offs instead of listing features
Cost fit	The architecture is realistic for the MVP budget	Cost drivers, assumptions, and guardrails are explicit
Architecture communication	Someone else can understand the design quickly	Optional diagram and written assessment tell the same story
Review and approval	Architecture and cost evidence pass their separate reviews	Both review artifacts are current, blocking findings are resolved, and the team approves the handoff

Tips / Hints

Compact prompt pattern and shared references

Use a prompt structure like this:

Review agent-output/freshconnect/01-requirements.md and recommend an Azure MVP
architecture for FreshConnect.

Decisions I need to make now:
- compute platform
- database choice
- security and network baseline
- cost trade-offs within ~€500/month

Return: WAF-aligned recommendations, key risks, and a diagram-ready summary.

Use Hints & Tips for deeper service selection prompts, Hints & Tips for cost thinking, and Quick Reference Card for the shared security baseline.

Watch Out

• Do not accept an architecture you cannot explain in business terms.
• Do not let an optional diagram drift away from the written assessment.
• Do not ignore cost assumptions until the end; they shape the service choices.
• Do not forget EU residency or governance requirements when comparing services.
• Do not merge the architecture and cost reviews into one generic approval.

Artifact Handoff

Item	Value
Input from	Approved requirements, SKU manifest, and requirements review evidence (Challenge 1)
Your output	Architecture and cost artifacts, separate review evidence, and optional design artifacts
Next challenge uses	C3 uses the assessment and diagram to choose IaC structure, validation steps, and deployment targets

Next Step

Challenge 3 turns this design into code. If your assessment is missing a service boundary, security control, or cost assumption now, implementation will either stall or invent its own answer later.