Architecture & Design: When to Buy Design Without the Build
by Green Dolphin Software, Architecture & Design practice
Most enterprise integration engagements assume the consultant ships code. That's the default model, and for many buyers it's the right one. But not everyone needs the build. Sometimes you have a build team — internal staff, an existing SI partner, or an offshore center — and what you actually need is senior architecture leadership to make sure they ship the right thing.
Sometimes you need a fundable design package to take to procurement before they'll sign off on platform licenses. Sometimes you've inherited an integration estate and need a 90-day modernization roadmap before deciding what to migrate. Sometimes you're evaluating two iPaaS platforms and need a vendor-neutral target-state design to compare.
All of these are Architecture & Design engagements. $25,000+ at the floor. ~2-3 weeks. No code. No deployment. Design package only.
What's in the design package
The diagram above is a target-state architecture for a synthetic Salesforce ↔ NetSuite integration on MuleSoft. It's representative of the deliverable depth — not a slide deck, an actual architecture you can hand to a build team and have them execute.
A complete Architecture & Design engagement delivers:
Discovery output
- 2-3 discovery sessions with client SMEs (recorded for client archive)
- Current-state assessment — what exists today, what's working, what's not, where the technical debt lives
- Stakeholder map — who owns what, who decides what, who's affected by what
Architecture artifacts
- High-level topology diagram (Lucid/Miro, editable + PDF export) — systems, networks, environments, observability stack
- Integration landscape diagram — current state + target state, side-by-side
- Detailed sequence diagrams per integration flow (one per business event) — timing, error paths, retries, idempotency
- Per-API design — full RAML 1.0 or OpenAPI 3.x specs with request/response schemas, error models, status codes, authentication patterns, pagination, versioning policy
- Canonical data model — entity-relationship diagram + JSON schema. Defines the domain language the integrations speak, independent of any single source system.
Decision artifacts
- Target-state platform stack recommendation with rationale — vendor-neutral, weighted against client's actual constraints (cloud center of gravity, team skills, regulatory posture, budget reality, AI roadmap)
- Deployment topology — environments, network, secrets management, observability stack, alerting
- Security & governance recommendations — AuthN/AuthZ patterns, secret management, data classification, audit logging, identity federation strategy
- Risk register with mitigation strategies — what could go wrong, how to monitor for it, what the response playbook is
Roadmap
- 90-day modernization roadmap (where applicable) — sequenced workstreams with dependencies, recommended team composition, milestone gates
- 2 design review sessions with client architecture team — collaborative refinement of the recommendations before sign-off
Who buys Architecture & Design (not Starter)
Five archetypes account for ~all of our A&D engagements:
1. "We have a build team, we need senior architecture"
Most common. Mid-to-large enterprises with a real engineering team — sometimes 5+ integration developers — who can absolutely execute a build but lack senior integration architecture leadership. A&D gives them a fundable, executable design package. Their team builds it.
2. "We're evaluating two platforms"
The team is choosing between MuleSoft and Workato, or Snowflake and Databricks, or Boomi and TIBCO. A vendor-neutral target-state design (with both platforms scored against their actual workload) settles the question objectively. Procurement uses the design package to negotiate licensing.
3. "Procurement needs a fundable design before they'll sign"
The business case justifies the integration initiative, but procurement won't sign the platform license without an architecture that proves it'll work. A&D produces exactly that: an architecture document that procurement can hand to legal, finance, and security for sign-off.
4. "We inherited a mess — give us a 90-day roadmap"
Acquisitions, leadership changes, or just years of accumulated integration sprawl. The team needs an outside-in assessment of what exists, what to keep, what to migrate, what to retire, and in what order. A&D produces the assessment + roadmap.
5. "We're starting an AI/RAG initiative"
The AI initiative requires a data layer that doesn't exist yet, or an integration layer that exposes enterprise data as agent-callable tools. A&D (or its sibling, Data Architecture) designs that layer before the AI build team starts.
What's NOT in scope
This is where the discipline of saying-no matters most. Buyers expecting A&D to include any of the following are buying the wrong tier:
- Source code / build / deployment — that's an Implementation tier (Starter / Standard / Enterprise / Custom)
- Vendor selection RFP authoring or running an RFP process — A&D informs RFP decisions but doesn't run procurement
- License procurement or vendor commercial negotiation — client owns vendor relationships
- Hands-on prototyping or proof-of-concept builds — sometimes a quick PoC settles a design question; that's a separate Starter engagement, not folded into A&D
- Ongoing architecture oversight during a downstream build — Managed Services tier handles continuous involvement
- Staffing a full Center for Enablement (C4E) — design recommends C4E structure; standing up C4E is an Enterprise-tier Integration engagement
Acceptance criteria
A&D engagements have explicit, measurable acceptance criteria:
- All design deliverables reviewed and accepted by the named architecture lead
- Design package signed off as ready for build (a downstream build team should be able to start from it without further architecture iteration)
- Roadmap (if scoped) signed off by client architecture leadership
If the design needs more iteration than the 2 review sessions allow, additional iteration triggers a Change Order with a new fixed-bid quote — the same change-order policy as every Green Dolphin engagement.
How A&D fits with the other 4 services
- Integration ($25K-$100K+, implementation) — same design discipline + build + deployment + handover
- Migration ($25K-$100K+, implementation) — same design discipline applied to moving from platform A to platform B
- AI / Agentic Solutions ($25K-$100K+, implementation) — same design discipline applied to LLM/agent builds
- Data Architecture ($25K+, design-only) — same model as A&D but focused on the data layer (Snowflake vs Databricks, Informatica vs Fivetran, medallion model, governance) instead of the integration layer
A&D is the integration-focused design-only tier. Data Architecture is the data-platform-focused design-only tier. Many clients buy both before committing to build — a full architecture-and-data-design package for ~$50K before any code ships.
What's included that isn't in the deliverables list
Two things that aren't on the deliverables list but show up in every A&D engagement:
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Vendor neutrality — we hold no kickback agreements with any iPaaS, warehouse, or AI platform vendor. The recommendation you receive is the one we'd implement on our own time if we were you. That neutrality matters more than most line items in the design package.
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Reusability — the design package is structured so a downstream build team (yours, an offshore partner's, an SI's) can execute it without coming back for architectural clarification. We've watched too many design packages get re-architected mid-build. The discipline that prevents that is built into the deliverable structure.
Ready to scope?
If you have build capacity and need senior architecture leadership, or you need a fundable design package before procurement, submit the 6-step intake form. $25K+, ~2-3 weeks, design package in your hands.
If you're not sure whether you need Architecture & Design or full Integration, the intake form has a question for that — pick "Not sure yet" and we'll triage in the 30-min clarification call (which is free). For a representative sample of design-deliverable depth, four anonymized Word documents from real engagements are downloadable at /samples.