Symptom-to-path

Local KPI Wars

Areas optimize against one another because local metrics drive behavior more strongly than shared impact or value flow.

archetypes

Success to the Successful

Competition for limited resources radically favors teams with a slight head start while others are left to dry out.

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Why this step:Makes the underlying pattern visible that keeps producing Local KPI Wars in everyday work.

diagnostics

Critical Systems Heuristics

A philosophical diagnostic tool that asks which actors gain power from a software architecture and who is disempowered by it.

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Why this step:Helps explain Local KPI Wars not just descriptively, but in a structurally understandable way.

diagnostics

Boundary Critique

A method for exposing brutal blind spots by questioning what, and who, was actively excluded from an architecture decision.

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Why this step:Adds a second perspective to the diagnosis so that side effects and limits become visible.

interventions

Incentive Redesign

The destruction of the cobra effect in IT by stopping the reward of failure-producing behavior and aligning incentives with system health instead.

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Why this step:Derives an initial intervention from the diagnosis that targets structure rather than only the symptom.

tooling

Systems Mapping Canvas Tools

Frameworks for the wall. Pre-structured thinking matrices, from Wardley Maps to Team API canvases, that keep architecture offsites from dissolving into philosophical small talk.

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Why this step:Supports the practical implementation and documentation of the path from Local KPI Wars to change.

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Copy this sequence as a structured agenda for your next architecture meeting or team workshop.