Current State Assessment

Current State Assessment

Systematically assess an existing system or codebase to produce a clear picture of the current architecture, capabilities, and technical debt. This assessment drives the gap analysis that informs the target architecture.

Overview

No target architecture is designed in a vacuum. This skill documents what exists today — its strengths, its limitations, and the debt that will impede change — so that the target architecture is grounded in reality.

Assessment Process

Step 1: System Inventory

Catalogue what exists:

• Services and components: name, purpose, technology, age
• Data stores: type (RDBMS, NoSQL, cache, file), technology, approximate size
• Integrations: upstream/downstream systems, protocol (REST, gRPC, queue, file)
• Infrastructure: hosting (cloud provider, region, on-prem), container/VM, IaC maturity
• CI/CD: pipeline tools, deployment frequency, automation level

Read the codebase (if available) using Glob and Read to supplement what the user provides.

Step 2: Architecture Pattern Identification

Identify the dominant architectural pattern:

• Monolith (single deployable unit)
• Modular monolith (logical separation, single deployment)
• SOA (service-oriented, shared database common)
• Microservices (independent deployable services, independent data stores)
• Serverless (function-based, managed infrastructure)
• Event-driven (async messaging, event sourcing)
• Hybrid (combination)

Note whether the pattern is intentional or has evolved organically.

Step 3: Capability Assessment

Rate current capabilities:

Capability	Current State	Maturity	Notes
Scalability	[description]	Low/Med/High
Observability	[description]	Low/Med/High
Security	[description]	Low/Med/High
Testability	[description]	Low/Med/High
Deployability	[description]	Low/Med/High
Developer Experience	[description]	Low/Med/High

Step 4: Technical Debt Register

Item	Category	Severity	Impact on Change	Remediation Approach	Effort
[debt item]	Architecture/Code/Data/Ops	Critical/High/Med/Low	[how it blocks progress]	[recommendation]	S/M/L

Categories:

• Architecture debt: structural decisions that limit scalability or change
• Code debt: poor quality code that is hard to maintain or test
• Data debt: schema problems, lack of data quality, no data contracts
• Operational debt: missing observability, manual processes, no runbooks

Step 5: Gap Analysis

Compare current state to typical requirements for the target state:

Capability	Current	Required for Target	Gap	Priority
[capability]	[current level]	[required level]	[description of gap]	High/Med/Low

Output Format

Produce a Current State Assessment document with:

1. System inventory table
2. Architecture pattern description + diagram (Mermaid text)
3. Capability maturity table
4. Technical debt register
5. Gap analysis table
6. Executive summary (3-5 bullet points on the most important findings)

Additional Resources

• references/technical-debt-patterns.md — Common technical debt patterns and remediation strategies
• assets/current-state-template.md — Blank assessment template