1. Does the design answer the brief?
Start with the business intent, affected workflows, and constraints. A diagram may look complete while failing to explain the requirement that prompted a service or connection. Review the proposal against the brief and identify requirements that do not yet have a clear design response.
Separate confirmed requirements from assumptions. Assign an owner to each unresolved dependency and state what evidence would resolve it. This makes it easier to decide whether the architecture can move forward or needs another review.
2. Are identity and data boundaries clear?
Identify the services and people permitted to cross each boundary. Describe where information is stored, where it travels, and the identities that can read, modify, or restore it. Include supporting systems such as logs, backups, and evidence archives in the discussion.
Record the security and compliance requirements that apply to the actual environment. A requirement noted on a blueprint is a planning input; assessment, authorization, and compliance acceptance need their own responsible owners and evidence.
3. Can the team explain the unavailable path?
For every important dependency, ask what happens when it is unavailable. Define what work can wait, what is retained, how exceptions are reviewed, and what is required before normal operations resume. Review recovery time and data-loss objectives with the business and operational owners.
If the proposal includes multiple regions, discuss synchronization, failover triggers, degraded behavior, and restoration order. The presence of a second region does not by itself establish a recovery outcome. The design should identify the conditions that need rehearsal.
4. Are cost and operating tradeoffs visible?
Review the workload and service assumptions behind each estimate. Region, usage, redundancy, retention, and support choices can change the cost and the complexity of operating the design. Treat illustrative estimates as a way to compare options, not as binding provider quotes.
Ask whether the responsible team can operate the proposed pattern. A design that assumes monitoring, specialized access, or an incident response capability the organization does not have needs an explicit plan to close that gap.
5. Are alternatives and approvals recorded?
An Architecture Decision Record should explain the choice, alternatives considered, and the constraints that influenced the decision. It should be understandable to the next reviewer or to a second facility evaluating the same reference pattern.
Record who approved the design and which checks were required. Separate an accepted exception from an unresolved issue. When an assumption changes, the record should help the team identify whether another architecture or continuity review is necessary.
6. Is the infrastructure handoff actionable?
Inspect the Terraform or other infrastructure-as-code output alongside its operating context. The delivery team needs the required inputs, environment settings, access assumptions, validation steps, and a clear deployment owner.
Agree on acceptance criteria and rollback responsibilities before production implementation. A reviewed bundle is a starting point for the team's delivery process; it does not establish that the target environment is configured, integrated, tested, or authorized. SynArch's reference walkthrough demonstrates that governed handoff using illustrative data.