In the previous post, we discussed the economic purpose of architecture. The economic purpose is probably the most emphasized facet regarding the Why of architectural work, yet hardest to grasp in its entirety and the hardest to get right. However, this does not mean that the other facets would be of less importance. But as they do not immediately emphasize time and money, they are often pushed aside in our highly commercial…

In the previous post, we discussed several architectural anti-patterns. We have seen that we are a lot more vulnerable to them if we do not understand why we do architectural work, i.e., understand its purpose. We understood that the focus and thus value of architectural work is accidental without having a clear understanding of why we are doing it.

In the previous post, we started discussing that not understanding why we do architectural work leads to many detrimental anti-patterns in software development. We can observe these patterns time and again:

This blog series is a long-overdue write-up of my presentation “Essential architectural work”. Of course, this is the 2026 version of the contents, i.e., it will also discuss the impact of AI on several aspects of architectural work. However, it is interesting to see that quite a bit of the stuff I discussed 7 years ago and learned over many years did not change. It is as valid now as it was back then.…

This post is about two observations I repeatedly make when looking around in our community. They are loosely connected by the topic of AI, which makes both observations more visible. The observations are about how we make our lives – IMO unnecessarily – harder.