I Didn’t Fail-The Pattern Did
Article summary
I Didn’t Fail-The Pattern Did We launched a new service in AWS with all the best intentions: stateless compute, event-driven design, least privilege, global scaling. But within six weeks, things started breaking in strange ways. No outage. No SEV. But behavior drifted. Costs ballooned. On-call fatigue spiked. People whispered about bad code, poor observability, or insufficient testing. But none of those were the real root cause. The architecture didn’t fail. The pattern we chose-lifted from blog posts, vendor slides, and our own past success-was never right for what we were building. What Went Wrong With the Pattern We over-indexed on stateless compute. We ran core logic in AWS Lambda. That worked-until the service needed coordination across customer state. Suddenly, we were bolting DynamoDB transactions onto what should’ve been durable workflows.
Read Full Article on MediumPractical takeaway
The main idea behind I Didn’t Fail-The Pattern Did is to help teams move from broad theory to clear, repeatable decision making. When teams apply this thinking, they reduce ambiguity and focus on improvements that deliver measurable momentum.
Example scenario
Imagine a team facing competing priorities. By applying the ideas in I Didn’t Fail-The Pattern Did, they can map dependencies, identify risks and choose the next move that produces progress without destabilizing their system.
Common mistakes to avoid
- Trying to redesign everything instead of taking small steps.
- Ignoring real constraints like incentives, ownership or legacy systems.
- Creating documents that do not lead to any change in code or decisions.
How to apply this in real work
Start by identifying where I Didn’t Fail-The Pattern Did already shows up in your architecture or delivery flow. Then pick one area where clarity would reduce friction. Apply the idea, measure its effect and share the learning.
Signs you are doing it correctly
- Teams make decisions faster and with fewer disagreements.
- Architectural conversations become clearer and less abstract.
- Changes land safely with fewer surprises or rework cycles.