Reference Architectures Are Lying to You

Every cloud provider has one. Every major consultancy sells one. Every conference talk ends with one on the final slide. Reference architectures are everywhere. And most of them are making your platform worse. The problem with reference architectures A reference architecture is a idealised blueprint for how a system should be structured. In theory, it gives teams a proven starting point, reduces decision fatigue, and encodes best practices from organisations that have already solved the hard pro