cata (noun, kata + catastrophe): a kata exercise gone horribly wrong.
I needed a word for failing at katas. "Cata" was the best I could do. - Aggelos Bellos
A tongue-in-cheek collection of anti-patterns, bad habits, and guaranteed-disaster moves for anyone facilitating or participating in architecture katas. Learn what to do by studying what not to do.
- Before a kata browse the list and remind yourself what not to do.
- After a kata see if you accidentally pulled off any of these catas.
- For fun try to spot them in the wild during tech conferences.
Got a cata to add? See CONTRIBUTING.md for the template and guidelines.
How to ruin the kata before it even starts.
| Cata | One-liner |
|---|---|
| The Over-Corrector | Jump in at the first sign of trouble instead of letting teams learn from mistakes. |
| The Vague Briefing | Skip the intro. Don't explain objectives, deliverables, or time structure. |
| The Tech-Savvy Stakeholder | Play the business role but talk like an architect, accidentally handing teams the solution. |
| The Harsh Critic | Tell teams exactly what they got wrong instead of guiding them to discover the gaps. |
| The Hands-Off Facilitator | Watch teams spiral without offering a single facilitation technique to get them unstuck. |
How to architect yourself into a corner.
| Cata | One-liner |
|---|---|
| The Solution-First Thinker | Skip the problem exploration and jump straight to picking technologies. |
| The Loudest Voice | One person dominates the conversation, dictating the design while the rest of the team watches. |
| The Empty Hands Fear | Rush to fill the whiteboard because having nothing to present feels worse than presenting the wrong thing. |
| The Deer in Headlights | The team hits a wall and freezes. Nobody knows how to move forward, and nobody is willing to try. |
| The Silent Audience | Sit through other teams' presentations without asking a single question. |
| The Recurring Question | Questions keep coming back mid-discussion, but the team re-answers them instead of recognizing the misalignment underneath. |
This project is licensed under the MIT License.