Do new features feel heavier and heavier to deliver?
Every small change breaks something old, bugs multiply, and a “tiny fix” turns into a 3-day quest?
If so — the problem isn’t the people.
It’s the architecture.
Or the lack of it.
🏗 What is architecture?
Architecture is the set of decisions that manage the cost of change over time.
Its goal: ensure that every new feature doesn’t cost more than the previous one.
If effort keeps growing with each iteration — your architecture is broken (or simply missing).
🪓 What bad architecture looks like
- Every change breaks something old
- Bugs appear “out of nowhere”
- The team gets tired and demotivated
- Management keeps asking “Why is it so slow?”
- The team grows, but the velocity doesn’t
- The cost of development grows exponentially
In plain words — chaos grows.
🤡 A bit of real life from projects
- “We need this release yesterday!”
- “We’ll clean it up later.” (Never 💀)
- “Don’t polish it, just make it work.”
- “We must finish before the deadline!” — over and over again.
With every such release and a few thousand new lines of code,
the project becomes more fragile and entangled.
Every new change triggers a new wave of bugs.
💡 Why does it happen?
The main enemy of architecture is haste ⚠️.
We trade quality for speed.
We gain time today — and lose much more tomorrow.
Let’s face it: speed without quality is an illusion.
🚑 How to fix it
“The more you rush, the less you achieve.”
You have to slow down to speed up.
Just like in sports — cycles of rest and adjustment are essential.
What you need:
👉 Design reviews for complex features (before implementation)
👉 Proper cross-review and shared conventions
👉 Use of design patterns with room for simple extension
👉 Regular work on technical debt
👉 Following SOLID principles and maintaining structure
👉 Understanding that every MR either improves or worsens the system
👉 Building a culture of accountability for introduced chaos (bugs)
👉 Realistic planning, risk assessment, and acknowledging project complexity
Most teams say “We’ll refactor later” —
but later almost never comes. The next feature always wins.
Culture starts from the bottom up.
If you’re a developer — write clean code, discuss design decisions,
appreciate reviews, grow your hard skills and responsibility.
Good architecture is not a luxury — it’s an investment.
It keeps change affordable and allows the product to evolve sustainably.
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