Responsible Organization
Transparent decision-making, ethical frameworks and diverse, healthy teams that build the system.
Software architect · Advisor · Co-founder, Arpeggia Studio
I help companies decide what to build, before the AI decides for them.
For 22 years I've built systems from the inside: as a developer, team lead and lead architect for logistics, public sector, insurance and telco. Today I help CTOs and founders turn unclear ideas into buildable products and make technology decisions that still make sense in five years. I'm a big fan of AI: I use it every day and teach teams how to use it wisely. Former engineer. Still reads the code.
- 22years designing & building software
- 1stO'Reilly Architectural Katas, Winter 2024
- 14countries served by one platform I architected
- 100+production deployments in my engineering years
- 1technical book written for Packt Publishing
01 / Concepts and approach
How I approach architecture.
Three things fit together here. Responsible Software Architecture says what a good design has to take care of. The six-step process is how I get there on a real project. Architectural Kata 2.0 is where people practise it.
- WhyResponsible Software ArchitectureFour pillars a design has to answer to
- HowSix-step design processFrom requirements to team boundaries
- PracticeArchitectural Kata 2.0A workshop to rehearse the process
Concept, co-created in 2024
Responsible Software Architecture
The problem: architecture decisions often focus on the technical side alone and leave out people, purpose and long-term impact.
What it is: a framework of four pillars that every significant design decision should be checked against.
Who: I created it together with Sebastian Dąbkowski and Wojciech Kasa, my co-founders at Arpeggia Studio.
Responsible Business
Technology choices aligned with sustainable business practice and long-term value for all stakeholders.
Responsible Code
Maintainable, secure and accessible code that follows good engineering practice.
Green Software
Energy-efficient applications that keep their environmental impact low.
Process I developed, 2024 to 2026
Six steps from a brief to a buildable design
The problem: teams jump from a brief straight to technology choices and discover missing requirements, risks and ownership questions too late.
What it is: six steps, each ending with an artifact the next step builds on. The steps themselves rely on established techniques by other authors, credited in each step. My contribution is the sequence and how the steps connect.
See it applied: the examples come from MonitorMe, the design that won the O'Reilly Architectural Katas. See the case below ↓
The steps interlock, like the faces of a Rubik's cube: turn one and the others move with it. When a later step brings new information, I go back and revise the earlier ones.
Step 01 of 06
Functional requirements
What the system must do, for whom, and why the business cares. Before boxes and arrows, I want the key flows and the outcomes they pay for.
- I ask
- Who are the actors? Which flows make money or save it? What happens if this flow is late or wrong?
- Artifact
- Event Storming board, actor and flow map, prioritised capabilities
- Built on
- Event Storming
- Example
- MonitorMe: collect vital signs, show them at the nurse station, alert staff on anomalies, keep 24 hours of history.
Workshop format, run with Sebastian Dąbkowski and Wojciech Kasa
Architectural Kata 2.0
The problem: architects rarely get to practise decisions without the risk of a live project. What it is: a one-day workshop where teams take the same business problem through the six steps, use AI agents that question their choices, and defend the result in front of a demanding client.
02 / Career: the whole path, already walked
Been there, built that.
Today I advise at board level. Over 22 years I held every job below it, down to writing the first line of code.
Pick a level, or click a box in the diagram, to zoom into that stage of my career
Advisor & Co-founder, Arpeggia Studio
Where I am today. I sit with founders, CTOs and boards before the money is spent: what to build, which vendor to trust, whether to rescue or replace. With AI as a tool, not an excuse.
- Product discovery
- Tech risk
- AI agents
- KATA workshops
03 / Case study
First place at O'Reilly Architectural Katas.
Winter 2024. An international competition judged on resilience, security, scalability and, above all, the quality of the reasoning behind every decision. Team BluzBrothers built the whole proposal in three evenings.
1stplace
O'Reilly Architectural Katas, Winter 2024
O'Reilly Architectural Katas, Winter 2024
- Problem
- Real-time patient monitoring for hospitals: vital signs from many devices, intelligent alerting, integration with hospital systems. Life-critical.
- Drivers
- ≤ 1 s average to display vitals · keeps monitoring when a device fails · high availability
- Decision
- Event-driven architecture, chosen for performance, availability and fault isolation.
- Judges
- Diana Montalion, Andrew Harmel-Law, Jacqui Read, Sergey Zinchenko
- Team
- Sebastian Dąbkowski, Piotr Filipowicz, Wojciech Kasa, Artur Kruszewski
04 / What I teach
Skills I help architects practise.
Most of my teaching happens in workshops, where people work through a realistic problem instead of listening to a lecture. These are the skills the exercises are built around.
- 01
From business goals to architecture requirements
Turning a business brief into functional requirements and the top three architecture characteristics, with Event Storming as the starting point.
- 02
Finding system boundaries
Discovering the domain and its bounded contexts before deciding how to split the system.
- 03
Comparing options and justifying trade-offs
Naming constraints and risks, weighing the options and recording the decision in an ADR.
- 04
Communicating architecture
C4 diagrams and a short pitch that a business stakeholder can follow and challenge.
- 05
Testing assumptions
Defending the design in front of a demanding client and answering the hard questions before they come up in a real project.
- 06
Using AI in architecture work
AI agents that ask hard questions and draft documents from the team's notes, while the people keep the decisions.
05 / In their words
What clients & teams say.
Fourteen written recommendations, from developers who reported to me to clients on the other side of the table. Grouped by what they keep coming back to.
What sets him apart is his ability to bridge the gap between technology and business.
Karol Wiszowatyco-CEO, Spyrosoft Innovo · author of The One Minute Architect
ManagerHe was able to fully understand where all of us were coming from, and at the same time offer new, futuristic, way-ahead-of-us kind of solutions.
Vlatka BencinaProject Manager, DPDgroup CSEE
Client06 / Speaking & writing
Thinking out loud.
Talks, workshops, a walking podcast and a book. The recordings are mostly in Polish; the articles are in English.
Talks
- Architectural Kata and the architecture design process (Better Software Design #85)PL2025
- Winners of the O'Reilly Architecture Katas Winter 2024: MonitorMeEN2024
- Six views on IT architecture: Architectural Katas Winter 2024PL2024
- How to get along with your client: proven tips for developersPLTalk
- Architecture is a musicENTalk
Walking & Talking podcast
- #11 Developer, don't write codePL2026
- #10 What's next for developers?PL2026
- #9 AI in business: notes from ProgramistokPL27 min
- Deep Dive #1: What is an agentic system actually made of?PL26 min
- #2 I almost sank an IT project: Conway's law in practicePL11 min
- #1 The architect in the age of AIPL27 min
Writing
- The Architecture We Didn't Build (Thanks to 5 Whys)ENArticle
- Product Discovery is not a documentENArticle
- The Complexity Map No One Teaches ArchitectsENArticle
- AI Accelerates Architectural ChaosENArticle
- The Hidden Problem in the Discovery ProcessENArticle
- Liferay 6.x Portal Enterprise Intranets Cookbook (Packt)ENBook · 2015
07 / Selected work
Decisions, on the record.
Every project starts with a business problem, not a tech stack. So that's how I document them: as Architecture Decision Records with context, decision and consequences.
Decide before you build
Arpeggia Studio clients · advisor
- Context
- Companies about to sign a vendor contract, rescue a troubled project or replace a legacy system, with no independent view of the risk.
- Decision
- Structured discovery and architecture reviews: options with cost, risk and timeline impact; a risk map; an action plan teams and vendors can execute.
- Consequence
- Decisions made while they're still cheap to change.
- My role
- Co-founder, senior solution architect
Contract Lifecycle Management
INNIO · via Inspeerity · architect
- Context
- Contracts across the company were configured inconsistently and their real costs were hard to predict.
- Decision
- A CLM platform that configures contracts correctly and simulates their costs before signing.
- Consequence
- One controlled, unified way to contract, with predictable numbers.
- My role
- Engineering Team Lead & Lead Architect
B2C platform for 14 countries
DPD Group · via eo Networks · architect
- Context
- A B2B parcel carrier needed a direct relationship with parcel recipients across 14 countries and 13 business units with different rules.
- Decision
- Three portals (customer hub, parcel redirection to Parcel Shops/PUDO with tracking, returns) on Spring Boot microservices, configurable per business unit.
- Consequence
- One platform, local behaviour per country.
- My role
- Java Architect & Team Lead: architecture, infra sizing, team
One portal for every labour office in Poland
Ministry of Labour & Social Policy · via eo Networks · architect
- Context
- Hundreds of county and regional labour offices ran separate, ageing portals.
- Decision
- Replace them with a single nationwide Liferay platform with shared search and workflows.
- Consequence
- A unified public service across the country.
- My role
- Liferay Architect & Team Lead
Facing a decision that's expensive to undo?
A new product, a troubled project, a legacy system or a vendor proposal on your desk. Let's talk it through for 30 minutes before you commit budget.
Book a free consultation →piotr.filipowicz@arpeggia.studio