Architecture, stack, and technology ecosystem
Separates Architecture, Stack, Runtime, Environment, Infrastructure, and Tooling; covers Runtime Profiles, provider neutrality, IaC, CI/CD, observability, and Tool Catalog.
Separates Architecture, Stack, Runtime, Environment, Infrastructure, and Tooling; covers Runtime Profiles, provider neutrality, IaC, CI/CD, observability, and Tool Catalog.
DCP Flow avoids treating architecture, stack, runtime, infrastructure, and tooling as synonyms. Each layer answers different questions and can evolve at a different pace.
Decision layers
Architecture defines structure and responsibilities; Stack names technologies; Runtime explains how software executes; Environment identifies contexts such as dev or production; Infrastructure provides resources; Tooling supports building, operating, and observing.
- Architecture.
- Stack.
- Runtime and Runtime Profile.
- Environment, Infrastructure, and Tooling.
A governed ecosystem
Provider neutrality, IaC, Configuration Drift, CI/CD, Observability, Automation, Orchestration, and the Tool Catalog keep technology subordinate to the solution. Tools are adopted by evidence rather than trend.
- Cloud/provider neutrality.
- IaC and drift.
- CI/CD and observability.
- Tool Catalog and Vendor Intelligence.
EspoCRM as an ADOPTED lightweight CRM
EspoCRM is DCP Flow’s adopted lightweight CRM option when a decoupled commercial lifecycle is needed without introducing a full ERP or building a CRM from scratch. ADOPTED does not mean mandatory: Solution Discovery and Project Truth still determine fit.
- Own Blueprint.
- Own Runtime Profile.
- Core/vendor read-only.
- CRM entities remain contextual.
Architecture, Stack, Runtime, Environment, and Tooling answer different questions
Architecture describes structure, responsibilities, and boundaries; Stack identifies primary technologies; Runtime explains how they execute; Environment defines the operating context; Infrastructure provides resources; Tooling helps build, deploy, and observe. DCP Flow governs these choices without becoming a technology itself.
- Architecture ≠ tool inventory.
- Stack ≠ Runtime.
- Branch ≠ Environment.
- Tooling serves the methodology.
Runtime Profiles and provider neutrality make deployment boundaries explicit
Each active Blueprint should express a proportional Runtime Profile covering local execution, cloud target, CI/testing compatibility, shared hosting, persistence, health, and recovery. Architecture separates the needed capability — such as object storage — from a provider-specific service. IaC helps version infrastructure and detect drift, but does not remove Human Gates.
- Shared hosting: SUPPORTED / CONDITIONAL / NOT_SUPPORTED.
- Capability ≠ provider service.
- Runtime divergence must be known.
- Reproducible IaC does not mean automatically authorized.
CI, observability, and vendor knowledge are capabilities, not authority
CI automates repeatable evidence, but a green pipeline is not Human Acceptance. Observability asks which signals are needed to detect and diagnose, not which product must be installed. Vendor Intelligence supplies official version-aware knowledge without allowing vendor documentation to define governance. The Tool Catalog reduces repeated research and separates adoption from experimentation.
- CI result ≠ Human Acceptance.
- Observability ≠ installing a tool.
- Vendor knowledge complements; it does not govern.
- EXPERIMENTAL ≠ ADOPTED.
Contextual glossary＋
Structure of responsibilities, boundaries, and relationships in a solution.
Set of concrete technologies used to implement an architecture.
Reproducible profile of the runtime environment required by a solution.
Infrastructure as code: versioned, reproducible infrastructure definition.
Ability to understand system state through logs, metrics, traces, and signals.