Why Good Architecture Still Fails in Production

Seniority, at least in architecture, often means noticing the missing question before the missing answer turns into an incident. The same logic applies to coupled systems. A component can behave well on its own and still create trouble once the rest of the system starts reacting to it.

Senior developers can see things newer developers might miss. That comes with having more experience both with the software being developed, and many years of experience, likely making the same mistakes or missing the same things being caught in review. But even with all the experience, so much goes into software, it's hard to catch everything. The best you can do is set systems up with a good foundation, so when things go wrong, you probably already know where to look to fix it.

The point is not documentation for its own sake though, but to make the system legible before production does the explanation instead.