Finding things
Documentation about Common Platform is spread across several places, each authoritative for a different kind of question. Knowing which to reach for is most of the skill.
Which source answers which question
| You want to know | Go to |
|---|---|
| How the products fit together, and what talks to what | The architecture model |
| What a domain term means | The domain language |
| How to get access | Onboarding |
| How something is actually implemented | The code, in the HMCTS GitHub organisation |
| Why a decision was made | Team records and internal Confluence |
| What is running in an environment right now | The deployment configuration, not any document |
The architecture model is generated
The architecture model is maintained as code and rendered, rather than drawn. That is worth knowing for two reasons: it is consistent with itself, and it can be reviewed like code — a change to the model is a pull request, not a redrawn picture in a document nobody can diff.
If you find it disagrees with reality, that is a finding worth raising rather than working around. A model that has drifted and a system that has drifted are different problems with different fixes.
Standards that apply beyond this programme
Common Platform sits inside wider HMCTS engineering practice. The standards section of this site covers what applies across programmes — repository conventions, security expectations, ways of working — and is the right reference for anything not specific to the criminal courts domain.
When the documentation is wrong
Everything here is a snapshot maintained by people, and the platform moves faster than
its prose. A page with a stale last_reviewed_on date is telling you something useful.
Prefer sources in this order when they disagree:
- The running system, for what is true now.
- The code, for what is intended.
- Generated documentation, such as the architecture model, which is derived from a source and so is consistent even when it is behind.
- Hand-written prose, including this page, which goes stale quietly.
Each page carries a contribution link. Correcting something you found wrong is more valuable than the time it costs you, because the next person pays that cost again otherwise.