This February 2016 post examined how many enterprises unknowingly fell into accidental architecture — systems that evolved through isolated decisions, firefighting, and lack of ownership. It highlighted the risk of local optimization without global coordination and made the case for reintroducing intentional, collaborative architectural practices within engineering and product teams.
By 2017, architecture guilds and engineering councils began appearing in agile organizations to balance autonomy with coherence. Technical strategy reviews, tech radars, and platform KPIs gained traction as lightweight but effective architectural governance models.
Today, in 2025, architecture is widely treated as a product. The best organizations invest in it continuously, with embedded architectural leadership and cross-team visibility. Accidental complexity is a known risk — and avoided with intent, documentation, and shared responsibility.
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