Architectural Tragedy of the Commons

From Wikipedia:

The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma arising from the situation in which multiple individuals, acting independently and rationally consulting their own self-interest, will ultimately deplete a shared limited resource, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone's long-term interest for this to happen.

It might seem odd to take a term related to environmental issues and apply the term to software, but please allow some poetic license around the meaning of "shared limited resource".

The architecture and design of an existing application is a resource providing a benefit to the developers and operational people who have to build features in an application and keep it running in production. It's a limited resource since misuse will reduce the benefit for everyone.

"Architectural tragedy of the commons" is a term that jumped into my mind a few years ago as something that can happen (not always, but sometimes) when:

- developers build new features into a  product without talking to each other (individuals act in their own self interest.

- teams build new features for a product without coordinating (teams can act in their own self interest).

- companies go through developers like Netflix goes through business plans (in a body shop, nearly everyone acts in their own self interest).

You've probably worked on applications where shortcuts and hacks make a codebase fragile and inconsistent. Maybe you've even worked on products where the developers took shortcuts that made the application more difficult to deploy and operate (thus making the IT department's life miserable).  This are examples of what I'd call an architectural tragedy of the commons.

Communication and leadership can commonly prevent an architectural tragedy of the commons, and often leads to sustainable design.