Heuristics

Prioritise System Integrity Over Local Convenience

Authors: Kenny Baas-Schwegler, Andrea Magnorsky, Andrew Harmel-Law

Submitter: Kenny Schwegler

How do we resolve conflicts between a team's desire for local implementation convenience and broader architectural principles?

When a team’s decision optimises for their immediate convenience at the cost of system-wide integrity, the architectural perspective must prevail. The architect’s role is to advocate for the long-term health of the system, even if it means more work for a team in the short term. This prevents the accumulation of technical debt across service boundaries.

Example

A team wanted to model a feature within their service because their libraries made it easier, but the architect advised against it because the feature clearly belonged in a different system.

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