Every Architect Should Leave a Jenny

Every Architect Should Leave a Jenny

Most architects know how to show up strong.

We can walk into a messy enterprise, hear ten opinions in ten minutes, and still draw a clean line through the chaos. We can build a roadmap, calm the room, and get delivery moving again. We can do the hard thing: decide.

But here’s the part we don’t talk about enough:

A lot of architects leave… and the organization goes right back to confusion.

They leave slide decks. They leave diagrams. They leave a few Confluence pages nobody maintains. They leave a new set of words that sound smart for a month, then fade. And after a quarter or two, the system drifts, politics wins, and the architecture becomes “whatever the next urgent thing is.”

That’s not architecture. That’s theater.

I’m in the architect game — and I’m calling a new standard

I’m an architect. I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve worked in the real world where budgets, security, deadlines, and politics all collide. I’ve seen what happens when systems are built on vibes instead of intent.

And I’m going to say it plainly:

If you hire me as a consultant, I’ll do the job.

I’ll run the program. I’ll lead the design. I’ll get the team aligned.

But when I leave, I’m not leaving you with “nothing but me.”

I’m leaving you with Jenny.

Because every architect should leave a Jenny of some sort — or they didn’t really finish the work.

What is “Jenny”?

Jenny is not a chatbot.

Jenny is not a slide deck.

Jenny is not another tool you have to babysit.

Jenny is a learning machine that lives with the team after the architect is gone.

Jenny holds the organization’s architectural intent in a form that can be checked, measured, and improved. She makes the invisible visible:

• What we said we were building

• What we are actually building

• Where we’re drifting

• What’s breaking standards

• What’s creating risk

• What needs attention now (and what can wait)

Jenny doesn’t replace engineers. Jenny doesn’t replace architects. Jenny replaces forgetting.

And in enterprise systems, forgetting is the most expensive failure mode there is.

The uncomfortable truth: Architects often leave no trail

Here’s the dirty secret in our industry:

A lot of architecture is trapped in one person’s head.

That head might be brilliant. That person might be charismatic. But when they leave, the architecture leaves with them. And then the organization pays for that loss—over and over—through rework, inconsistency, platform sprawl, surprise outages, and “why are we doing it this way again?” meetings.

Architects should not be single points of failure.

If your architecture requires a hero to keep it alive, it’s not mature architecture. It’s a fragile story.

What I learned after school: Reality is the curriculum

I’m grateful for education. But let’s be honest:

Nobody teaches you what really happens in a big enterprise.

They don’t teach you the politics. They don’t teach you budget gravity. They don’t teach you the security maze. They don’t teach you how quickly “standards” collapse when teams are under pressure.

Real architecture is not just designing systems.

Real architecture is designing systems that survive people.

That’s the difference between a diagram and a discipline.

Jenny is how architecture becomes a living system

Jenny is my way of making architecture operational.

Not as philosophy. Not as slogans. Not as aspirational PDFs.

Operational.

Jenny lives in the places teams already work:

• Repos

• Pipelines

• PRs

• Build logs

• Observability dashboards

She turns architectural intent into something that can be validated continuously. That means architecture stops being something we say and starts being something we prove.

And that’s the whole point.

The challenge to other architects

If you’re an architect reading this, here’s my challenge:

When you leave a program, what actually remains?

Not the presentation. Not the buzzwords. Not the “target state.”

What remains that helps the next architect—and the teams—keep the system honest?

Because if the answer is “my deck” or “my documentation,” I’m telling you straight:

That’s not enough anymore.

Every architect should leave a Jenny:

• A repeatable governance loop

• A living set of intent definitions

• Automated checks that keep drift visible

• A learning system that improves with the team

• A durable trail of decisions and rationale

If you can’t leave that behind, then your architecture depends on your presence. And that’s not a legacy — that’s a dependency.

Why this matters right now

AI is everywhere. Most of it is hype. A lot of it is “smart tool” marketing. And enterprises are about to spend a fortune chasing miracles.

I’m not interested in miracles.

I’m interested in learning machines.

Machines that help teams learn faster, make better decisions, and stay aligned—without needing a hero in the room.

That’s the lane I’m in.

Jenny and Mark: the point of the picture

The picture isn’t about ego.

It’s a statement of intent.

It’s saying:

The architect shouldn’t be the product.

The system should be the product.

The learning should remain after the architect is gone.

That’s what Jenny represents.

And yes — I’m competitive. I’m in the architect game. I believe I can walk into any organization and do the work.

But the bigger flex isn’t “watch me architect.”

The bigger flex is:

Watch me leave something that outlives me.

If you want this in your organization

If you’re leading technology and you’re tired of architecture that evaporates when people rotate, you’re not alone.

The solution isn’t more meetings.

It isn’t more docs.

It isn’t another standards committee.

It’s building an operational learning loop that survives turnover.

That’s Jenny.

Learn. Teach. Master.

And leave something real behind.