Last night I was scrolling through WeChat Moments when I suddenly got pulled into a group chat. A closer look revealed it was all former Didi colleagues. “What’s going on?” I asked, scanning the member list. Everyone had left the company except Tao. I thought, “Maybe Tao got a big offer and is treating us to drinks?” Then the vibe shifted – the group name was changed to “Architecture Team Disbanded.” I literally spit tea onto my screen, laughing until my stomach hurt. Reading through the chat, memories came flooding back.

The Architecture Team’s Origins

The story begins with the “The One” project. After the Didi-Kuaidi merger, coordinating multiple business lines on mobile became a bottleneck for rapid product iteration. The platform engineering department launched a project called “The One” to solve the heterogeneity and collaboration problems across business lines. That team was the prototype of the architecture team, though back then it was called the Common Platform. After The One went live, the Common Platform maintained the entire framework. Later, Gang, Da-shixiong, and Hai joined one after another, and the architecture team gradually found its footing.

I was later sent to support the Minibus business – everything built from scratch. After a few of us pushed through an intense launch period and things stabilized, I pulled out. By the time I returned to the Common Platform, it no longer existed. It had been merged into the Express (Kuaiche) business unit, and the architecture team with it. Despite being embedded in a product org, the team stayed committed to solving real business pain points with solid engineering. From open-sourcing VirtualAPK, to CoCoDynamic mysteriously racking up stars with nothing but a README, to shipping the Hotfix system – in hindsight, that was the team’s peak. Then for reasons I never fully understood, Hai left. Da-shixiong moved to R Lab. Others followed. The architecture team lost the fire it once had.

Where Does an Architecture Team Go?

The dissolution wasn’t unique to Didi. Other companies have seen the same pattern. The Common Platform got merged into a business unit because it wasn’t supporting the business well enough. I’ve spent a lot of time since then thinking: where should an architecture team go?

My biology background eventually gave me a framework. From an ecological perspective, the business and architecture teams live in the same ecosystem. The relationship should be mutualistic, not parasitic. Mutualism means: each can survive alone, but both thrive together – like lichen (fungi and algae in symbiosis), or legumes whose root nodules harbor nitrogen-fixing bacteria, helping the plant absorb more nitrogen (which is why legumes are high in protein – but I digress). Parasitism means: one party can’t survive independently and must extract nutrients from the other – think blood flukes or tapeworms. The company is the ecosystem.

Producers and Consumers

Business teams generate revenue, so survival isn’t their biggest challenge. How does an architecture team survive? The answer lies in the same ecological model. A healthy ecosystem must have two key roles: producers and consumers. Both parties need to clearly understand their role. To survive, you must both produce and consume to maintain ecological balance. Where do the architecture team’s resources come from? The business teams, of course. So the architecture team must plan around business needs and solve real pain points – not build a pile of wheels that nobody wants to use, or worse, try to convince business teams to adopt them. Where’s the value in that? If what you produce can’t be traded for what you need, there’s only one outcome: extinction.

Wow the Customer

I recently learned a phrase at Coupang – “Wow the Customer.” It’s one of Coupang’s core values. “Wow” is an exclamation of surprise. “Wow the Customer” means exceeding expectations so thoroughly that people are astonished – like when the iPhone first launched and consumers would do anything to get one. For any team, whoever you serve is your customer. For business teams, the customer is the end user. For the architecture team, the customer is the business team. Make your customer say “wow,” and your team will not only survive in the ecosystem – it will flourish.