I spent a good chunk of last week designing the architecture for a new service. On paper it was clean — well separated concerns, sensible boundaries, tests covering the happy paths. I felt good about it.
Then someone asked what this service was going to become in two years time, and I realised I had no idea. Not because the design was bad, but because I had never really thought about it beyond the project itself. I had optimised for getting something built, not for where it was going.
This is a habit I have noticed in myself and in people I work with. You get handed a problem, you design a solution, you ship it. The project is done. But the product — whatever larger thing this service is supposed to serve — that never really gets designed at all. It just kind of accumulates.
I think the difference is that project architecture is tactical. It is about solving a specific problem with the constraints you have right now. Product architecture is strategic. It is about what you are building towards, and it requires you to make decisions that may not pay off for a long time.
The trouble is that product architecture does not feel like progress. You cannot put it in a sprint, you cannot demo it, you cannot show anyone a diagram and say “look at that”. It is just thinking. And thinking is hard to sell when everyone is waiting for you to build something.
I do not think there is a clean answer to this. You cannot plan forever and you cannot build without any plan either. But I think the people who get it right are the ones who make a point of stepping back and asking what they are actually building, even when it feels like a distraction from the work in front of them.