Most enterprise architecture diagrams are theatre

Unpopular opinion: most architecture diagrams in enterprise companies are theatre. While my system diagrams usually live on the team rooms' whiteboards for years.

Those enterprise diagrams are not wrong, exactly. They're just designed to impress in a review, not to guide a team.

They get drawn once. They live on a Confluence page nobody finds. They're out of date six weeks after the sprint that created them. And when a new engineer joins and asks "why did we choose this approach?" — nobody can answer.

The diagram exists. It is huge, boxes become dots on zoom out. The decision is lost. The team is confused. Each member understands it slightly differently.

Real architecture documentation does three things:

1. It shows where you're going, not just where you are.
2. It records why, not just what.
3. It lives close enough to the work that it stays honest.

My Tech North Stars are built to do all three. Without becoming the next edition of "War and Peace".

Stay tuned, the first package is about to drop soon.