*People* Detangle a Ball of Mud

The architecture will never be perfect. Small balls of mud is the best we can do. The size depends on how many people work together.

Give people or teams ownership of parts of the system. Over time the system will naturally break into decoupled sub-systems where sneezing in one area doesn’t break the other areas.

Decoupling happens on its own. Your job is to give folks ownership, step the heck back, and let them shine. Be patient and give people space to fix things when they’re annoyed. Let annoyance fuel their refactors