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Architectural debt starts outside the code

12 November 2025 · 43 views · 1 likes · 0 reposts · 109 blog views

Infrastructure automation decision-making leadership product

Just read a piece on architectural debt. It has nothing to do with technical debt, which is mostly code shortcuts.

The real problem starts outside the code.

There are a few layers:

  1. App / Infrastructure (easier to identify)
  • Not "rewrite that service in Rust", but why are we still moving files over sFTP and doing REST?
  • why do we pay for AWS storage & use SharePoint? your targets: vendor lock-in, overlaps, messy integrations - the points where delivery slows & bills go up.

  1. Business This is about ownership + reality

    Who handles a data leak? If you modernize one team and break five others - that’s debt definitely. You have bad docs/onboarding/process documentation. It equals to bad assumptions which in turn expensive mistakes.

  2. Strategy (highest impact) If your capability map is wrong, you’re building a 3–5 year plan on fiction. This is where transformations/ideas die before they even start.

Architects/CTO actually have (but usually don't have) the time + zoomed-out view to spot this stuff. Their job is basically: show people reality, show the mess, convince to fix it. And man ... that's sooooo hard sometimes.

Architectural debt starts outside the code

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