Someone has to live with that diagram.
I’ve worked close enough to cables, code, products and teams to distrust architecture discussed entirely in boxes and arrows.
Who needs this capability? What happens when it fails? Who will maintain it? Those questions connect technical decisions to everyday consequences.
A service that looks independent on a diagram may require three teams to coordinate every release. A flexible data model may make a simple product change surprisingly difficult. These details eventually turn up in someone’s calendar.
I enjoy an elegant design. I also want to understand what it costs to operate and change.
Having started with physical infrastructure, I still occasionally look at a cloud architecture and wonder how many things we’ve found a more sophisticated way to unplug.