Absence of Software Architecture 🏗️ Why Software Architecture Matters
10 min read · published by Jens-Uwe Lössl on 3/1/2025
Did you ever work on a software project where something felt off, but you couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was?
Everything seems to be moving forward—features are being developed, tickets are getting closed, and deployments happen regularly. Yet, over time, friction begins to build. Decisions become inconsistent, refactoring becomes a frequent task, and onboarding new developers takes longer than expected. The codebase seems to resist change rather than enabling it.
These are often signs of a missing or eroding software architecture. When architecture is absent, foundational decisions are made implicitly, rather than through deliberate design. The result? A system that evolves unpredictably, accumulating complexity that slows development and increases long-term costs.
How to Recognize the Absence of Architecture
Knowledge Silos
I once worked at a company where I began documenting the architecture of the system. During this process, I discovered two services that appeared to serve the same purpose. So, I asked: “When a new feature is being implemented, how do you decide which service to use?” The response I got was: “Oh, that’s easy. If Paul implements the feature, it will go into Service A. If John is implementing it, it will go into Service B.”
Let’s pause for a moment and think: What happens if John or Paul leaves the company? A new developer would then need to understand both services in order to comprehend the system and modify an existing feature. And also as there was not a team responsible for maintaining these services, the knowledge was only in the heads of John or Paul.
This answer also told me, that decision were made based on pure accident (whoever started to work on the feature first), rather than aligning with the requirements of the system.
Accidental Discovered Requirements
At the same company, another challenge emerged when they developed a service to connect their internal systems and external APIs through a centralized communication broker. The idea was promising: provide external services with a simple REST API and allow them to subscribe to events. However, instead of leveraging an existing message bus solution, the company opted to build one in-house.
After two years of development, the service was finally production-ready. The developers had thought through every technical detail—recovery mechanisms, event subscriptions, and all the functionality a message bus should provide. The system worked flawlessly, at least from a purely technical standpoint. But when it came time to implement real-world use cases—such as sharing user data across all internal services—the entire concept started to unravel.
What they hadn’t considered was that different domains have different needs. The service was designed with a single database to store all the data objects it needed, but a “user” in one system didn’t necessarily mean the same thing in another. Across various domains, users could be employees, customers, creditors, or debtors. One domain didn’t even have a “user” concept at all—it only worked with “employment contracts.”
This led to a cascade of internal meetings, where product managers and developers from each domain had to sit down, explain their perspectives, and attempt to design a unified data model that worked for everyone. The process was slow, complex, and frustrating—especially for those who had to compromise on their domain’s autonomy. What was once a well-defined data model within each domain was now entangled in cross-team dependencies. Suddenly, making changes required understanding how every other domain worked, significantly increasing cognitive load and development time.
After multiple release delays and the hiring of a new CTO, the company ultimately decided to shut down the project entirely. What was meant to streamline integration had instead created an unsustainable complexity. Years of effort and a significant financial investment were wasted—all because no one had considered the architectural implications before development began.
Symptoms of Absent Software Architecture
When software architecture is absent, the effects often manifest subtly at first but grow increasingly disruptive over time. Here are some indicators.
Increasing Cross-Team Dependencies
In the absence of architectural planning, teams frequently discover too late that their work depends on other teams in unexpected ways. Instead of being able to develop and deploy independently, they must coordinate constantly, leading to slowdowns, misalignment, and frustration. This is particularly problematic in organizations aiming for autonomous teams and continuous delivery.
Inconsistent Technology Choices
When there’s no architectural vision, teams and individuals often make technology decisions in isolation. This leads to a patchwork of different frameworks, libraries, and patterns coexisting within the same system. For example, one part of the codebase might use one ORM while another relies on raw SQL queries. Frontend applications might be built using different component libraries, causing inconsistent user experiences. These inconsistencies create unnecessary cognitive load for developers and increase maintenance complexity.
High Onboarding Effort
A well-architected system should be easy to understand and navigate. When new developers join a project with no clear architectural guidelines, they must rely on tribal knowledge and reverse-engineering existing code to figure out how things work. This drastically increases onboarding time, making it difficult for teams to grow efficiently. The more effort it takes to onboard a new developer, the stronger the sign that architectural decisions were made without a clear structure.
Scaling Problems Emerge Unexpectedly
Without architectural foresight, scaling challenges often surface in unexpected ways. A system might work fine with a small user base but struggle as load increases. Bottlenecks appear in areas no one had anticipated because decisions about data flow, service communication, or state management were made ad hoc. Addressing these scaling issues later in development often requires extensive rework, leading to delays and budget overruns.
Constant Refactoring Without Clear Direction
Refactoring is a natural part of software development, but in the absence of a solid architectural foundation, it becomes an endless cycle. Developers find themselves constantly reworking the same areas of code, not because of iterative improvements, but because foundational design choices were never made—or were made inconsistently. Without a guiding structure, every attempt to clean up the code leads to new inconsistencies, making long-term maintenance a nightmare.
Development Gets Unpredictable
When architecture is absent, development becomes unpredictable. Estimates are unreliable, and deadlines are missed. Teams struggle to deliver features on time, as side effects appear. The lack of a clear architectural vision makes it difficult to predict how changes will impact the system, leading to a constant state of firefighting and reactive decision-making.
Why Does Architecture Disappear?
Given the importance of software architecture, why does it often go missing in action? Several factors contribute to its absence.
One of the primary reasons architecture fades into the background is because it’s often seen as a luxury, something to tackle once all the “real” development work is done. In the rush to deliver features and meet deadlines, architectural decisions are postponed or ignored. The immediate focus is on shipping code, so long-term planning takes a backseat.
Additionally, in some organizations, there is a lack of consensus on what good architecture looks like. Different teams may have competing ideas or may simply lack the necessary expertise. Over time, this misalignment results in incoherent decisions that further complicate the codebase.
Finally, some teams simply don’t have the resources to dedicate to architecture. Junior developers may lack the experience to recognize the need for structure, while senior developers may become so immersed in day-to-day tasks that they forget the bigger picture. Without strong leadership guiding the technical direction, architecture becomes a casualty of rapid, unsustainable growth.
Short-Term vs. Long-Term Goals: The Architecture Dilemma
In the fast-paced world of software development, organizations often prioritize short-term goals at the expense of long-term strategy. Delivering features quickly to meet customer demands, hitting quarterly targets, and addressing immediate bugs can feel more urgent than planning for the future. As a result, architecture—something that supports long-term growth—can seem like a secondary concern.
The tension between short-term and long-term goals is where architectural neglect often begins. Leaders and developers may make decisions based on what can be shipped now, without considering the future implications of those decisions. For example, building a quick fix to address a bug might involve a workaround that will lead to scalability issues later. Or, choosing a technology because it’s trendy or solves an immediate need without understanding how it will fit into the broader system can create inconsistency.
The problem lies in the fact that, without a solid architectural foundation, a company may find itself caught in a vicious cycle. Short-term goals continue to take precedence, and long-term planning gets pushed to the margins. However, by ignoring long-term architectural needs, organizations inadvertently create roadblocks that will hinder their future ability to scale, innovate, and adapt to change.
Striking a Balance
The key to overcoming this challenge is finding a balance between short-term goals and long-term strategy. While it’s important to deliver results and keep the business moving forward, an organization must also invest in its architectural future. Good architecture doesn’t mean slowing down—it means being strategic about growth, making deliberate decisions, and laying the groundwork for scalability and flexibility.
For instance, instead of constantly refactoring after the fact, invest time upfront to establish guidelines, ensure technology choices are aligned with the future roadmap, and design with adaptability in mind. This balance will allow organizations to meet their immediate business needs while preparing for sustainable growth.
The Hidden Costs of No Architecture
The true cost of a poorly-architected system is often not immediately visible. It shows up in indirect ways, making it easy to overlook. But eventually, the effects become undeniable:
- Loss of Agility: The most immediate cost is the erosion of agility. Without a solid architectural foundation, each new feature or change becomes a complex negotiation of dependencies, legacy code, and misaligned expectations. Rather than building incrementally, teams spend more time untangling and repairing existing work.
- Technical Debt: Over time, the system accumulates technical debt. This means higher maintenance costs, slower development cycles, and a less reliable system. What could have been a small, fixable problem in the beginning often grows into a monstrous bottleneck. And as technical debt grows, it becomes harder to justify investing in architectural improvements, creating a vicious cycle.
- Employee Burnout: Developers quickly become frustrated when they’re constantly firefighting issues that could have been avoided with better architectural planning. This frustration leads to burnout, which affects team morale and retention. In turn, this makes onboarding new developers even more difficult, perpetuating the cycle of inefficiency.
- Business Risk: As the system becomes more brittle, the risk of failure increases. A minor issue, overlooked in the design phase, can spiral into a crisis during production. Whether it’s a bug in the code or an unforeseen scaling problem, these risks compound and threaten the business’s reputation and bottom line.
- Opportunity Cost: Perhaps the most insidious cost of all is the opportunity cost. When a company is bogged down by a poorly-architected system, it loses the ability to innovate, experiment, and adapt to changing market conditions. Competitors who have invested in their architecture can move faster, deliver better products, and capture market share that might have been within reach.
Conclusion
In the world of software development, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of architecture. After all, code is what ships, and it’s what gets immediate attention. However, neglecting architecture is akin to building a house without a solid foundation. While it may stand for a while, it will eventually crumble under the weight of time and complexity.
Recognizing the signs of a lack of architecture early on can save you countless hours of rework, frustration, and lost opportunities. By investing in a clear, deliberate architectural vision, you enable teams to move faster, scale more efficiently, and, ultimately, build more sustainable systems.
So, the next time you feel that something is off in your project, take a step back and ask yourself: Is the architecture of our system up to par? If not, it might be time to pause, reflect, and invest in the foundation that will carry your project forward.