Study Plan & Active-Recall Drills
You said chapter-by-chapter, so here’s a sequence rather than a calendar. If you want a rhythm, ~2–3 chapters/week lands the book in about 10 weeks.
| Block | Chapters | Goal / deliverable to produce yourself |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Mindset & modularity | 1–3 | Personal glossary started; write out coupling/cohesion/connascence in your own words with code examples. |
| 2. Characteristics | 4–7 | Define 5 characteristics measurably; sketch a fitness function for one; write the architecture-quantum definition from memory. |
| 3. Components | 8 | Take a system you know and do the technical-vs-domain partitioning both ways; spot the entity trap. |
| 4. Styles foundations | 9–13 | Start the master comparison table (star ratings). Recite the 8 fallacies. |
| 5. Distributed styles | 14–18 | Fill the comparison table through microservices; for EDA, diagram broker vs. mediator. |
| 6. Choosing + patterns | 19–20 | Do the 3-step style-selection process on 2 sample problems; add each pattern to the table with its trade-off. |
| 7. Decisions & risk | 21–22 | Write one real ADR (all sections); run a mini risk-storming on one characteristic. |
| 8. Communication | 23 | Draw the same system at C4 Context and Container levels. |
| 9. People & leadership | 24–25 | Self-assess against the 3 architect personalities and the 4 C’s. |
| 10. Intersections & capstone | 26–27 | Write the three laws from memory; list your role’s adjacent disciplines. |