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Part B: Architecture Platform

With the foundational principles established, we now turn to the technical building blocks that enable Architecture as Code in practice. This part explores the automation, tooling, and platform capabilities that transform architectural intent into executable reality.

The journey from foundational principles to operational systems requires robust automation and deployment pipelines. Modern organisations must combine DevOps practices with CI/CD workflows that treat infrastructure and architecture with the same rigour as application code. This integration creates the feedback loops and quality gates essential for reliable, repeatable delivery.

Containerisation and orchestration represent a natural evolution in Architecture as Code, where application packaging, deployment patterns, and runtime environments are all defined declaratively. Between the automation pipelines and containerisation, architecture modeling with tools like Structurizr provides the crucial bridge—enabling teams to visualise, document, and communicate their architectural decisions as code. By codifying these concerns, teams achieve consistency across development, testing, and production whilst maintaining the flexibility to adapt to changing requirements.

What you will learn in this part:

  • How to establish CI/CD pipelines specifically designed for Architecture as Code
  • DevOps practices that enable collaborative, automated infrastructure delivery
  • Architecture modeling and visualisation using Structurizr and the C4 model
  • Container-based architecture patterns using Docker, Kubernetes, and orchestration tools
  • Integration strategies that connect automation pipelines with version control and testing
  • Platform thinking that empowers teams whilst maintaining governance and compliance

This part builds directly on the version control practices and Architecture Decision Records covered earlier, showing how those foundations enable sophisticated automation. The security and governance practices explored in subsequent parts will depend on the platform capabilities established here.