Architecture Under Pressure
Designing systems for the day they fail.
An advanced engineering course built around post-mortems. Students read real failure narratives, reconstruct the decisions that produced them, and learn to design systems whose failure modes are boring, visible and survivable.
6.9h
Study time
18
Lessons
5
Modules
4.9
Rating
298 reviews
Enrolment
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Subjects covered
6 topics
Knowledge map
What you will be able to do
- Reason about failure modes before writing the first service
- Choose consistency and availability trade-offs deliberately
- Design observability that answers the question you will actually have at 3am
- Write an architecture decision record that survives review
- Recognise the organisational causes of technical failure
Curriculum
5 modules · 18 lessons
- 01Anatomy of an OutageThe working method for failure modes, reduced to what actually matters.24m
- 02Proximate Cause and Real CauseHow consistency works in practice, once the deadline is real.22m
- 03The Failure You Designed InA close look at observability and the failures it is meant to prevent.26m
- 04Writing a Post-mortem Worth ReadingThe judgement calls behind decision records, and what each of them costs.20m
- 01Consistency Is a Product DecisionMaking capacity explicit enough that somebody else could repeat it.26m
- 02Queues, Retries and Duplicate WorkWhere recovery usually goes wrong, and how to notice it early.24m
- 03Idempotence as a Design HabitMaking failure modes explicit enough that somebody else could repeat it.20m
- 04Migrations Without DowntimeA close look at consistency and the failures it is meant to prevent.28m
- 01Metrics, Logs, Traces and What Each Is ForThe working method for observability, reduced to what actually matters.22m
- 02Alerting on Symptoms, Not CausesMaking decision records explicit enough that somebody else could repeat it.20m
- 03Dashboards Nobody UsesA close look at capacity and the failures it is meant to prevent.18m
- 04Debugging in Production SafelyMaking recovery explicit enough that somebody else could repeat it.24m
- 01Load, Latency and the Knee of the CurveThe judgement calls behind failure modes, and what each of them costs.26m
- 02Backpressure and SheddingWhere consistency usually goes wrong, and how to notice it early.24m
- 03Graceful Degradation by DesignHow observability works in practice, once the deadline is real.22m
- 01The Architecture Decision RecordWhere decision records usually goes wrong, and how to notice it early.20m
- 02Reversible and Irreversible ChoicesHow capacity works in practice, once the deadline is real.22m
- 03Presenting a Design for AttackThe working method for recovery, reduced to what actually matters.24m
Assessment
Written assignments assessed against the brief, with short retryable quizzes between modules.
Quizzes
- Failure and State6 questions · pass 75%
Assignments
- An Architecture Decision Record30 points
What students say
- 5 out of 5Karel Novák — Founder
Demanding in a useful way. The assignment came back with three specific criticisms, all correct, none of which I had thought about.
- 5 out of 5Diego Ferreira — Design lead
Not a beginner course despite the label, and better for it. Expect to reread the middle module.
- 4 out of 5Marta Kowalska — Editor
The examples are drawn from ordinary situations rather than glamorous ones, which made them far easier to apply on Monday morning.
Fictional reviews — demonstration content only
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