I Failed 3 Architecture Reviews Until I Discovered This One Document Format

Three rejections. Six months. Same review board.

The third time broke me completely. I’d spent weeks preparing — polished slides, color-coded diagrams, answers rehearsed for every possible question. Two hours in, the lead architect stopped me.

“We still don’t get why you’re building this.”

I sat there stunned. How could they not understand? I’d explained everything.

That’s when I realized: the problem wasn’t my idea. The problem was how I was explaining it.

PowerPoint Is Destroying Architecture Decisions

Nobody talks about this, but architecture reviews are set up to make you fail.

Not on purpose. But the format itself — slides, bullet points, diagrams — forces you to perform instead of communicate. You become a salesperson pitching technology choices instead of an engineer solving business problems.

I’d spent years perfecting presentations. Smooth animations. Beautiful layouts. Confident delivery. And every single time, the same outcome: confusion, pushback, rejection.

Here’s what I finally understood: slides let you hide. You can wave at a diagram and talk around the hard parts. You…