Why Every Engineering Project Must First Justify Its Existence

The article argues that before any architecture or deployment work begins, teams should ask whether a given artifact needs to exist at all. It uses an apple as an analogy, noting that the eaten fruit rests on a vast web of trees, pollinators, farming, transport, and digestion that is easy to overlook. The author suggests that judging a system by its visible output alone understates the dependencies beneath it. The same reasoning applies to small software tools, which appear cheap but require tests, releases, documentation, and ongoing maintenance. The piece concludes that underestimating these hidden dependencies is a common planning mistake.