Why We Don't Need to Architect Digital Solutions Anymore

In the olden days (before 2010), a small development team would be roughly 12 people. Today, I achieve more output with just 3 to 6 people, depending on the mix of senior and junior resources. Interestingly, and counterintuitively, a team of three typically produces more than double the output of a team of six... But that's a conversation for another day.

Most of this increase in efficiency comes from removing several "Yurei" style roles, like enterprise architects, technical architects, network architects, security architects, and solution designers. Because I focus on building new solutions on cloud V2 services rather than inheriting old technology, I don't need any of these architects. In other words, all the technologies I use are "pre-architected," and the quality of these pre-architected services is far superior to anything I could afford in the old infrastructure days.

The best analogy I can come up with (and it's not amazing, I warn you) is that of buying a prefab mansion. When we think of prefab housing, we often imagine cheap, low-end options. However, there's a massive industry in custom-made but prefabricated structures at scale, like hospitals.

The advantages of custom designing something and pre-fabricating it are numerous. The two that stand out for me are quality and cost – both of which resemble the use of cloud V2 technologies, which are preassembled and fully automated. Building something and then transporting it in pieces has the hidden benefit of using much higher quality designers and builders because they are centralised with their peers. In cloud terms, I'm alluding to San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Seattle, not Sydney. Besides the resources themselves being more senior craftsmen that I can't afford to employ directly, assembling these centrally makes use of supporting technologies in massive warehouses. The end result is a higher-quality structure made to a higher standard in terms of precision and workmanship.