The Architecture of Failure: The Seven Sins of the Digital Age (Video)

Your team looks busy — but is anything actually getting done? This video dissects the seven modern sins that quietly sabotage digital teams, drawing on the classic wastes of lean manufacturing to reveal why “more effort” often means less progress.

Most teams don’t fail from a lack of effort — they fail from a lack of restraint. This video explores “The Architecture of Failure,” a parable that maps seven systemic dysfunctions onto the realities of modern software development.

Rooted in the seven wastes of lean manufacturing, these “sins” explain the patterns that trap high-performance teams in cycles of context-switching, bureaucratic overhead, and feature work that nobody asked for. The video walks through each one: the cognitive thrashing that masquerades as multitasking, the obsession with novelty over essentials, the erosion of institutional memory when decisions go unrecorded, and the way meaningful work loses its shape as it passes through management silos. It also addresses the compounding cost of intellectual debt — what happens when speed is consistently prioritized over discipline.

The central argument is deceptively simple: software isn’t built by effort alone, but by the unfashionable virtue of restraint. Or, put more bluntly: finish one thing.

The video is based on the original article The Seven Sins of the Digital Age.

Source: The Architecture of Failure: The Seven Sins of the Digital Age