Why complexity tiers matter more than industry when choosing an architecture

I designed the Tech North Star packages around specific level of complexity. Industry wasn't enough, scale became a driving dimension.

I have seen widly different mistakes at different scales of the client, product or organization.

A small-scale system — a few engineers, a few weeks — doesn't need microservices. If you hand that team an enterprise architecture package and ask them to adapt it, they'll spend more time stripping out what doesn't apply than building the thing in the first place. The overhead becomes the project, and you can kiss goodbye to your investment.

An enterprise-scale system — multiple squads, year-long horizon, regulated environment — can't be solved at the module level. A single-service design is fine as far as it goes. Monoliths can be easily successful too. But it doesn't show you the system boundaries, the data flows, the regulatory touchpoints. It answers the wrong scaling problem, your scale is at the organization, not at the product or even the users.

The complexity tier you are at determines where you want to go and how you get there. My Tech North Star packages take these into account.

Pick too simple: you'll outgrow it before you ship meaningfully. Pick too complex: you'll spend your budget on scaffolding.

Each OTF Tech North Star package is calibrated to a specific scope. Not one-size-fits-all. The right skeleton for the right engagement.