The framework’s vocabulary, in short, citable definitions. Each term is an anchor: use the direct link to reference it in a conversation, an ADR or a presentation.
Architecture characteristicility
A systemic quality the platform must exhibit to enable business objectives: scalability, availability, performance, security, testability. These are the famous ilities, prioritized in stage 2.
Implicit characteristics
Characteristics every serious system carries even when the business doesn’t ask for them (feasibility, security, testability, maintainability). They sit on a separate track and don’t compete for the top 7.
Trade-off
The price one prioritized characteristic charges on another: protecting availability may pressure consistency; simplicity competes with flexibility. Deciding without naming the cost is not deciding.
Risk-storming
A collaborative, visual technique for identifying risks over architecture diagrams, created by Simon Brown (riskstorming.com) and incorporated by AARM as stage 3. The whole team identifies risks in silence, then places them on the diagram.
Prioritization matrix
A grid of impact (1 to 3) by probability (1 to 3). The product of the two scores defines the risk priority, from 1 to 9. Scores of 6 and 9 demand immediate treatment and become architectural stories.
Architectural story
A backlog item connecting a strategic objective to a technical action through a characteristic, mitigating a risk. Written in the objective → characteristic → technology format, with technology always last.
Lineage
The trail every AARM item carries: objective → characteristic → risk → story. If an item connects to no strategic objective, it probably doesn’t belong at the top of the backlog.
ADRArchitecture Decision Record
A record of a hard-to-reverse architecture decision: context, decision, alternatives and consequences. In AARM, an ADR often springs from a risk while writing the stories. Numbered in sequence and never deleted.
C4
A four-level architecture diagramming model (context, containers, components, code), by Simon Brown. It is the map on which risk-storming happens.
Strategic objective
A business outcome the architecture must enable, written in business language. Confirmed 3 to 5 in stage 1, they serve as the prioritization criteria for the whole cycle.
Risk
An event and its consequence that threatens a prioritized architecture characteristic. Identified in risk-storming, it gets impact and probability scores and, when high, becomes an architectural story.
AARM Sprint
Elegant Garden’s productized offer that runs the full AARM cycle on a product in 4 weeks, facilitated by the framework’s creators.
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