Scaling Starts with Simplicity

In many engineering organizations, especially those that are small to mid-sized, the topic of technology governance can feel like overhead, something for larger enterprises with dedicated architecture boards. But in reality, governance isn’t about control. Done right, it’s about enabling engineers to move faster, collaborate better, and solve meaningful problems without unnecessary friction.

A good example of this is technology stack alignment.

Imagine a backend team of 10 - 20 engineers working across multiple services. Over time, they’ve accumulated three primary stacks, e.g. Go, Java, and Node.js. Each language has its strengths, and in isolation, all of them are great choices.

However, in practice every additional stack increases the cognitive load across the team. It fragments knowledge, slows down onboarding, and creates silos in documentation, tooling, and conventions. When ownership of a service shifts, as it inevitably does, the new team not only inherits unfamiliar domain logic, but also unfamiliar codebases, libraries, frameworks, and tooling.

Imagine a common scenario:

Team A builds a Node.js service tailored to their needs. A year later, ownership rotates to Team B, whose entire context is Java. Even if the runtime is stable, every bug fix, metric enhancement, or security patch is now a time sink. Multiply this by 5–10 services, and you start to see the drag on momentum.

This cost is rarely felt immediately. It creeps in quietly:

• Observability, security, and error handling must be implemented and maintained twice
• Best practices evolve in parallel, often diverging, and knowledge sharing becomes patchy
• Engineers spend time reinventing solutions instead of building on common foundations
• Mobility between teams is reduced or at least made unnecessarily difficult

It’s not just about productivity. It’s about cohesion, clarity, and the ability to scale sustainably as a team.

That’s why tech governance matters. And no, it doesn’t have to mean heavyweight processes or rigid mandates. ThoughtWorks coined the idea of Lightweight Technology Governance , and it’s a model worth paying attention to as it encourages to

• define clear principles
• promote shared standards through open conversation and communities of practice
• retain team autonomy within those bounds

The goal is to avoid technology sprawl, the slow, uncontrolled proliferation of languages, frameworks, and tools that make collaboration harder and systems messier.

At the heart of this is a mindset shift from:

“What tool do I personally prefer?”

to

“What choice sets my team up for success, now and in the future?”

Domain-Driven Design reminds us that technology exists to serve the business domain, not the other way around. Making thoughtful, aligned decisions about your stack isn’t about minimizing innovation, it’s about reducing accidental complexity so teams can focus on what really matters: solving problems.

If you’re part of a team facing similar challenges, this might be the time to pause and align. Choose your stack with care. Discuss trade-offs openly. Define governance that supports rather than restrict your flow.