Responsible Organization
Team boundaries shape system boundaries. Design both together, or Conway's law will do it for you.
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 / How I think
A method, not a mood.
Good architecture isn't a diagram someone draws on a good day. I use a repeatable six-step process: the same one I teach at Architectural KATA workshops and the one my team used to win O'Reilly's Katas.
Step 01 of 06
Functional requirements
What must the system do, for whom, and why does the business care? Before boxes and arrows, I want the key user journeys and the outcomes they buy.
- I ask
- Who are the actors? Which flows make money or save it? What happens if this flow is late or wrong?
- Artifact
- Actor and flow map, Event Storming board, prioritised capabilities
- Example
- MonitorMe: collect vitals, show them at the nurse station, alert staff on anomalies, keep 24 h of history.
Co-authored concept
Responsible Software Architecture Concept
Systems outlive the decisions that shaped them. Responsible Software Architecture asks whether a design scales, makes business sense and ages well: for the people who build it, the business that pays for it and the planet that runs it.
Responsible Business
Every technical decision is an investment decision. Cost, risk and time-to-value belong on the diagram.
Responsible Code
Fitness functions, not wishful thinking. Quality you can measure, whether a human or an AI agent wrote the code.
Green Software
The cheapest compute is the compute you don't run. Efficiency is a design-time choice.
AI accelerates architectural chaos.On AI-assisted delivery
Tactical DDD is going to the machines. Strategic DDD stays human.On domain-driven design
Conway's law always wins. Design the teams, or it designs you.On organizations
Sell outcomes, not hours. Be Kasparov, not Kodak.On the future of IT services
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. Scroll to walk the path with me.
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
Scroll to zoom in ↓
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.
1st
- 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 / 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
Client05 / 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
06 / 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