Four stages, the same order every time — whether the engagement is a two-week architecture review or a six-month migration.
Understand the system as it actually is — existing architecture, constraints, and the real reason the current setup is running into trouble — before proposing anything.
Put a concrete architecture on paper, with the alternatives that were ruled out and why, so decisions hold up under later questioning.
Ship it, hands-on: implementation across the stack, from backend services and cloud infrastructure to the frontend that sits on top of it.
Hand off documentation, monitoring, and a system the next team can actually run — without the architect still needing to be on call.
Send a note with what you're building and where it's stuck. A reply usually comes within a business day.