👋 Hey there,
Have you ever reviewed a system design that looked polished, but still felt... unclear?
The diagrams were sharp. The slide deck was 12 pages.
And yet no one in the room could confidently answer:
“Wait, what exactly does this system do?”
This happens more often than you think, not because the system is bad, but because no one has actually tried to tell its story out loud.
As developers, we’re taught to focus on implementation.
As architects, we need to focus on intent.
💡Architecture Is a Story You Should Be Able to Tell
Every system tells a story, even if you didn’t mean for it to.
The question is: can you tell it on purpose?
If someone asked you to explain your system to a new teammate, without opening code, slides, or Miro, could you do it?
Here’s a simple stress test:
Imagine your system is on trial.
You have 2 minutes to defend its purpose, its boundary, and its key design decisions, using only words.
If that feels hard, the system might be doing too much.
Or maybe it’s why it has been lost under layers of how.
This isn’t about sounding smart.
It’s about being able to communicate clearly, to your team, to stakeholders, and to future-you in 6 months when something breaks and no one remembers how it works.
🛠 Tool of the Week: The Architecture Brief
To make this easier, I use a tool called the Architecture Brief, a one-page narrative snapshot of any system, service, or module.
It’s not a spec, not a whitepaper, and definitely not an excuse for documentation theater.
It’s just the essential story, written in plain language.
Here's the structure I use:
📌 Name
What is this system/component called?
🧠 Purpose
What is its job? What problem does it solve for the business or user?
🗺️ Scope
What’s inside this system’s responsibility? What’s explicitly out of scope?
🔁 Interfaces
What systems or teams does it interact with? Over what protocols or contracts?
⚙️ Key Decisions
What tradeoffs were made? What assumptions did you accept?
📉 Known Limitations
What corners were cut, and why? What risks are known?
📈 Future Considerations
What changes are expected? What will need to evolve?
👤 Team / Owner
Who owns this system? Who answers questions about it?
I write these for most new services I help design.
And I re-read them before every high-stakes feature or system review.
It turns “here’s how it works” into “here’s why it makes sense.”
✅ Mini Challenge: Write the Story of a System You Work On
This week, pick one system, preferably something you've recently worked on or still maintain.
Set a timer for 10 minutes.
Try to answer just these 3 prompts in plain language:
What problem does this system solve?
Where do its boundaries start and end?
What tradeoff did you consciously make when designing it?
If you get stuck, that’s useful data.
Clarity is architecture.
If your system is hard to describe, it might be trying to do too much.
🎯 Want to learn how to design systems that make sense, not just work?
If you liked this issue, you’ll get even more out of the free 5-day crash course:
From Developer to Architect
It walks you through the exact mindset shifts that help devs grow into architectural roles, including how to:
Define clear system boundaries
Communicate design intent
Make confident tradeoffs
Avoid overengineering
Think in systems, not just services
Each lesson is short, practical, and designed to shift how you think, not just what you code.
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👋 Wrapping Up
Thanks for reading.
If something here clicked, or didn’t, hit reply. I’d love to hear what part of the architect role feels most unclear to you right now.
See you next week,
Bogdan Colța
Tech Architect Insights