The Mental Model That Keeps Small Projects From Becoming Big Monoliths
How building two AI systems taught me the discipline of platform vs. application boundaries
I built two AI systems—Virtual CTO Advisor and CTO Scanner. On paper, these look like two products that should be owned by different teams. In reality, it was just me. But I deliberately designed and managed them as if separate groups were building them.
What I learned mirrors the core challenges CIOs and CTOs face every day managing teams of thousands.
The most critical insight? No matter your team size, you must operate with a scale mindset. My "two-team" mental model created a forced architectural discipline. It’s the same discipline that prevents enterprise IT from repeating the mistakes of brittle, tightly coupled architectures as they scale hybrid or multi-cloud platforms.
The New Bottleneck: Governance in the Age of AI
Modern tooling—code assistants, deployment pipelines, instant feedback loops—has made shipping code faster than ever. The new bottleneck isn’t speed; it’s governance. It’s our ability to communicate and coordinate those changes across teams.
This is where the "two-team" mental model becomes critical. It required me to define contracts, consumers, and governance before urgency forced my hand.
Virtual CTO Advisor became the platform team. It’s an API-first service with contracts and versioning, treated as a product for others to build on. That’s the foundation for any scalable service.
CTO Scanner became the application team. It will consume the Advisor’s API, building in caching, retries, and its own business logic. This mirrors the enterprise best practice of decoupling apps from platforms.
This wasn’t just about my side project—it’s a microcosm of the challenges every IT organization faces when trying to move fast and stay in control. The architectural choices we make, no matter the team size, directly impact our ability to scale, govern, and respond to business needs.
The Takeaway
You don’t need a big engineering org to benefit from team boundaries. Even as a team of one, pretending you’re two is a powerful mental model. It forces the discipline required for a post-monolith world and leaves you with a cleaner foundation when others eventually join in.
What operating models or architectural disciplines have helped you prevent your organization from drifting back into a monolith?