What does your System Design reflect ?

System design is core element of any product and essential of its evolution. Initially design is consistent and follows common practices since team is small and the decisions follow unsaid guidelines which provides needed conherence and design philosophy for adding new features.

However, as it scales, the teams become bigger and diverse and maybe physically in different timezones. Challenges become evidently harder with scale. The design might start becoming incoherent due to lack of discipline, documentations, training etc.

Design should not only be the document but it should also accompany the language, design patterns, common technology principles and some such guardrails to help someone new on project design.

Many times the system design slowly starts to reflect the organization structure. If it reaches that point, it has become rotten.