The best Salesforce architects I know don’t just design solutions for today’s requirements. They think in systems — understanding how every decision creates ripples across the entire ecosystem.
The feature trap
It’s easy to fall into what I call the “feature trap.” A stakeholder asks for a specific capability, you build it, they’re happy. But six months later, that quick win has created data inconsistencies, governor limit issues, or integration bottlenecks that cost 10x more to fix than the original feature.
Systems thinking in practice
When I approach a new architecture challenge, I start with three questions:
- What are the boundaries? Where does this system start and end? What crosses organizational, technical, or process boundaries?
- What are the feedback loops? How does data flow through the system? Where are the reinforcing and balancing loops?
- What are the constraints? Governor limits, data volumes, integration throughput, user adoption curves.
A real example
On a recent financial services project, we were asked to build a simple case routing system. A feature-focused approach would have been straightforward — a few assignment rules, maybe some Flow automation.
Instead, we mapped the entire case lifecycle across three business units, two Salesforce orgs, and an external system. We discovered that the “simple” routing needed to account for regulatory requirements, SLA calculations that spanned systems, and escalation paths that crossed organizational boundaries.
The architecture we delivered was more complex upfront, but it eliminated an entire category of problems that would have emerged months later.
The takeaway
Systems thinking isn’t about over-engineering. It’s about understanding the full context before making architectural decisions. Sometimes the simple solution is the right one — but you can only know that if you’ve considered the system as a whole.