English Phrases for Architecture Review Boards

An Architecture Review Board (ARB) is a formal governance body that evaluates significant technical decisions — new system designs, platform migrations, major technology choices — to ensure they align with organisational standards, security requirements, and long-term technical strategy.

For non-native English speakers, presenting at an ARB is one of the most linguistically demanding situations in engineering. The audience is senior, the decisions are high-stakes, and the discussion can become highly technical. This guide gives you the language and structure to present and defend your proposals with confidence.

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What an ARB Expects

ARBs typically evaluate proposals against several criteria:

• Alignment with standards — does this fit the organisation’s approved technology stack?
• Security and compliance — does this meet security requirements?
• Scalability and reliability — will this work at scale over time?
• Cost — what are the total cost of ownership implications?
• Alternatives considered — did the team think critically about other options?

Your presentation must address all of these, and you must be prepared to answer challenging questions on any of them.

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Opening Your Presentation

Your opening should establish context, state the problem, and give the board a clear sense of what you are asking them to approve.

“Thank you for the opportunity to present. Today I’m bringing [Project Name] for architecture review. The business problem we’re solving is [X], and we’re proposing [solution]. I’ll walk through the proposal, the alternatives we considered, and the trade-offs we’re accepting. I’ll leave ten minutes for questions at the end.”

“This proposal is for a significant change to our data persistence layer. It has been reviewed by the security team and our cloud architect. I’m here today to seek formal ARB approval before we begin implementation.”

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Presenting the Architecture

Describing the Current State

“Currently, our system uses a monolithic database that serves both transactional workloads and reporting queries. As our data volume has grown, these two workloads are competing for resources, causing degraded performance for both.”

“The existing architecture was designed for 50,000 daily active users. We are now at 400,000, and performance has degraded measurably.”

Describing the Proposed Architecture

“We’re proposing a CQRS pattern — separating the write model from the read model — so that reporting queries no longer compete with transactional writes.”

“The proposed architecture introduces an event streaming layer using Kafka, which decouples the order service from the fulfilment service. This reduces coupling and allows each service to scale independently.”

“I’d like to walk through the architecture diagram on slide four. The key components are [X], [Y], and [Z]. Data flows from left to right: [describe the flow].”

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Discussing Alternatives

ARBs respect teams that have genuinely considered alternatives. Present at least two options you evaluated and explain why you rejected them.

“We evaluated three approaches. Option A is what we’re proposing. Option B was [description] — we rejected it because [reason]. Option C was [description] — this would have been technically viable, but the cost of migration was prohibitive at this stage.”

“The main alternative to Kafka was RabbitMQ. We chose Kafka for two reasons: we need message replay capability, and our expected throughput of 50,000 messages per second exceeds what RabbitMQ can sustain reliably on our infrastructure.”

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Discussing Trade-offs and Risks

“I want to be transparent about the trade-offs we’re accepting. This architecture increases operational complexity — we’re adding Kafka, which requires expertise to operate and monitor. We have two engineers with Kafka production experience, and we’re planning a knowledge-sharing programme to build broader team capability.”

“The main risk is the migration period, during which both the old and new systems run in parallel. We’ve designed a feature flag that allows us to switch traffic between the two systems, which enables a gradual rollout and easy rollback.”

“We’re accepting a temporary increase in infrastructure cost during the transition — estimated at £4,000 per month for three months. The long-term cost will be lower than the current architecture.”

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Handling Challenging Questions

ARB members will probe your proposal. Here are phrases for responding to difficult questions professionally.

When You Don’t Know the Answer

“That’s a good question. I don’t have that data with me today, but I can follow up with the specific figures by end of week. Would that be acceptable?”

“I’d want to confirm this with our security team before giving you a definitive answer. Can I come back to you on this?”

When You Disagree with a Concern

“I understand the concern. My perspective is different — here’s why: [reason]. But I’d value hearing more about what’s driving your concern, in case I’m missing something.”

“That’s a valid point. We did consider that scenario. Our conclusion was [X] — but I’m open to discussing it further if you think the risk is higher than we’ve assessed.”

When Asked to Justify a Technology Choice

“We chose [technology] for the following three reasons: [list]. We evaluated [alternative] but rejected it because [reason]. I’m happy to go into more detail on the evaluation if that would be helpful.”

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Closing the Presentation

“To summarise: the business problem is [X], our proposal is [Y], and the key decision we’re asking the board to make is whether to approve this architecture for implementation. We’re confident this approach is the right one, but we’re open to conditions or modifications the board considers appropriate.”

“We’re requesting ARB approval to proceed. If approved, we plan to begin implementation in the next sprint. If there are conditions attached to the approval, we’re prepared to address them.”

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Presenting at an ARB is a career-defining skill. The engineers who do it well combine deep technical knowledge with the ability to communicate trade-offs, risks, and decisions in language that the full board can evaluate. Preparation, structured presentation, and honest acknowledgement of uncertainty are the keys to a successful ARB.

Navigating Nuance: Addressing Feedback from Non-Native Speakers

The core of effective Architectural Review Board (ARB) communication isn’t just about stating your reasoning; it’s about how you state it. For developers whose first language isn’t English, the subtleties of professional phrasing can be particularly challenging. It’s easy to fall into overly direct or technically dense explanations that aren’t easily understood by a broader audience – including those on the ARB who may have different technical backgrounds or priorities. A key element is demonstrating you understand why someone might find your explanation difficult, and proactively offering clarification.

Consider this scenario: You’ve submitted a pull request introducing a new dependency for data validation. During review, you receive feedback from a senior engineer named David saying, “This adds significant complexity. Can you elaborate on the trade-offs?” Your immediate instinct might be to dive straight into a detailed explanation of the validation logic and its performance characteristics – perhaps using terms like “regex optimization” or “asynchronous processing.” However, David’s phrasing suggests he needs a higher-level understanding. A better response acknowledges his concern directly: “David, I appreciate you highlighting the added complexity. My intention was to streamline our data handling process by centralizing validation, reducing duplicated effort across services. I recognize that this introduces new dependencies, and I’m happy to discuss the specific trade-offs – for example, the initial setup time versus ongoing maintenance overhead.”

Another common situation arises during a discussion about architectural choices. Let’s say you propose using a message queue for inter-service communication instead of direct REST calls. A reviewer asks, “Why not just use REST? It’s simpler.” Rather than immediately defending your decision with arguments about eventual consistency and decoupling, try phrasing it as an investigation of their understanding: “That’s a good question! REST is certainly simpler for immediate requests. However, our current architecture relies heavily on synchronous calls, which can create bottlenecks and impact the responsiveness of other services. We’re exploring this queue to mitigate those potential issues in the long term – essentially building in resilience against future scaling demands.” This approach demonstrates you’re open to their perspective and willing to explain why a potentially more complex solution might be ultimately better aligned with broader architectural goals.

Finally, it’s crucial to actively seek clarification if you don’t understand a reviewer’s feedback. Don’t hesitate to ask, “Could you elaborate on what you mean by ‘this is not scalable’? I want to ensure I fully grasp your concerns and how my changes might impact the system’s future growth.” Showing willingness to learn and adapt will be greatly appreciated, fostering a more collaborative environment within the ARB. Remember, effective communication isn’t about imposing your technical knowledge; it’s about building bridges of understanding.