We often assume that architects working on the same system share the same understanding of its structure. They're looking at the same code, attending the same meetings — surely they see the same thing. But what happens when you actually test that assumption?

That's the challenge Aino Corry faced when she was brought into a large American company to help a team of architects understand their monolith before breaking it into microservices. When she asked for a full day, the response was skeptical: "A whole day? We're just gonna look at some diagrams." But Aino held firm. Drawing on work with Simon Brown, she gave the architects a deceptively simple task: draw the component diagram of the monolith from memory, without looking at the code. Then they put every diagram on the wall — and walked the line. The surprise was immediate. Architects who'd been working on the same system for years had fundamentally incompatible mental models of its core structure. Using the liberating structure 1-2-4-All, Aino turned that surprise into a conversation unlike any they'd had before — one where not knowing became acceptable, and the quiet voices finally had room to speak.

This conversation explores how externalising individual mental models creates richer architectural discussions, why structured facilitation changes who gets heard, how to handle the vocal skeptic who thinks you've wasted their day, and the consultant's dilemma of never quite knowing if your workshop made a lasting difference — unless you happen to have a spy in the organisation you drink red wine with.

Key Discussion Points

• [00:01] Setting the Stage: Aino explains how she came to facilitate architecture workshops even though she's no longer a practicing architect — and why the same facilitation dynamics apply regardless of domain
• [00:02] A Whole Day? Really?: The team's resistance to spending a full day on understanding before doing, and why Aino insisted on it
• [00:04] Draw What You Know: The deceptively simple exercise of drawing the monolith's component diagram from memory — without looking at the code
• [00:05] Walking the Wall: The moment architects discovered their mental models of the same system were fundamentally incompatible
• [00:08] You Can't Win Them All: How one vocal skeptic dismissed the day as a waste of time, while newer team members found it invaluable
• [00:12] The Champion Skeptic: Aino reflects on what she'd do differently now — using Linda Rising's pattern to redirect skepticism into constructive energy
• [00:16] The Consultant's Dilemma: How do you know if your workshop actually made a difference once you've left the building?
• [00:22] To Understand Everything Is to Forgive Everything: Why seeing each other's mental models changed judgment into curiosity

Guest: Aino Corry Hosts: Kenny Schwegler, Andrea Magnorsky

Hello and welcome to another episode of Stories on facilitating

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Software design and architecture.

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Today.

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We're joined by, I know Corey, and as

usual, I'm used, joined by, Kenny, norm

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Coconspirator in this, uh, anyway, I know.

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Please take it away.

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Aino Vonge: Yes.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for inviting me.

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I was a bit.

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Hustled when you admired me for this

because it's been a long time since I

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actually was a software architect myself.

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I was always very interested in

design patterns and architecture

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patterns and software architecture,

and I remember making software

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architecture around the first Bluetooth

communication when that started, and I.

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Thought about the invitation then I

thought, but actually, even though

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what I'm doing most of all now is

facilitation, I'm doing facilitation

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of architecture workshops even

though I'm not myself doing the work.

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And in those architecture facilitation

workshops or in the facilitation

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of architecture workshops, the same

things happen as when I facilitate

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any other workshop because it is.

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Obviously just people that are

communicating about things, so it's

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the same things that are important, and

one of the things that are very much

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important when you are facilitating

anything is that you get to hear from

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everybody who is in the room, not

just from the most important people or

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from the people who are the loudest.

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And it has been my experience before

I started facilitating when I sort

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of just went to software architecture

design meetings that some people

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would have more say than others

and not necessarily because they

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were better at making decisions or

understanding the software architecture.

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So I want to tell you a story

about a software architecture

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workshop is about 10 years ago.

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It was in a, a big American company,

so we had a lot of architects

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in the room that were working on

different parts of the system.

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The system was a monolith, and it was

the time when everybody wanted to divide

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their monolith into microservices.

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So there was a lot of architecture

workshops around understanding your

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monolith and figuring out what bite-sized

microservices you should take out of it.

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But with everything else you.

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You need to understand what

it's you're working with before

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you start working with it.

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So I said, I, I think I could facilitate a

workshop to understand the monolith before

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you start dividing it into microservices.

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And I, I said to them that I would

like a whole day and they said,

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well, a whole day, really, we're

just gonna look at some diagrams.

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And I said, but no, but I really,

I really need a whole day.

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And reluctantly they said yes.

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And let me in this room with all these

highly paid software architects and

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I, I started off with some, some ice

breaking, talking about how are we today

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and what are our expectations for this?

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And some people were more eager to

talk about that than other people.

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and.

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Gave me information about who they were

and how much they wanted to talk or not

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talk, which is important information

for me from, for the rest of the day,

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who should I tease into saying something

more and who should I try to maybe

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suppress or put into smaller groups?

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And I discussed with Simon Brown, um,

how to do this because you remember

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his C four model and all these

different workshops that he's doing.

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So I had asked him for input and he said.

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What could be fun could probably be to

make everybody draw on a piece of actual

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paper, the component diagram of this

monolith, and then try to compare them.

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And I said to them that I would now

give them time to draw that component

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diagram, but without looking at the code,

just drawing it as they believed it was.

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And initially they.

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They thought it was a bit silly

because they wanted to just look

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at the code, but I said, well,

let's try it out because it's, it's

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my, your job is to be a software

architect for this particular system.

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So it's interesting to see

what you have in your heads.

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And it's not a competition

about who does it best.

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It's, it's just, um, trying to figure out

can we make a brain dump of the situation?

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And they did.

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They all made their brain

dump on a piece of paper.

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Individually, and then we put the pieces

of paper on the wall, all of them.

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And then we just took

a walk down the wall.

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And that was a huge surprise for them

because there were some things that they

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were in agreement about, but there were

some things where they were definitely

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in disagreement about how was the.

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The chain of control here.

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what knew about what parts of the

system, what could touch, what

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could see which part of the system.

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So that was really, really interesting.

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And then I asked them to first, just

without saying anything, just look at

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these diagrams and then think about it.

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Quietly and then talk about it

two and two to show each other.

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This is something that is really

weird because in my diagram it's

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not the same as in this diagram.

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And then after they talk two and two,

ask them to talk four and four it.

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It's the liberating

structures 1, 2, 4, all.

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And then after they talk four

and four, I finally went into the

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plenary with all of them and then.

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They could share if they wanted to.

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What were the surprises?

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What were their worries?

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What were the things that they

were still wondering about?

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And there was really interesting.

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To have them talk about this because

instead of just looking at the code and

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looking at the files, they had a real

genuine discussion about parts of the

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system, responsibility of parts of the

system, what, visibility you should

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have for different parts of the system.

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So it was, it became a, a software

architecture discussion on different level

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than they normally had, and it actually

enabled some people to say things.

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Who would normally be quiet

because they would be afraid

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of being absolutely correct.

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But this was not about

being absolutely correct.

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This was about having a discussion

about what, how we see this system.

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Yeah.

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And we went on in the afternoon

to look at the different sort of.

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Hotspots or problems in,

in the, um, in the system.

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So what are the risks?

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what are the places where it

would be a little bit bad?

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Before we did that, we consolidated

all the different diagrams.

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So we agreed on one component diagram,

and then we, again, individually

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looked at the different risks,

which had exactly the same effect.

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That because people were able to

individually think about it and share it.

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And then talk about it in

a more structured setting.

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it started some really

interesting discussions.

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Yeah.

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So that was my, initial story and I'm

eager to hear if you have any questions

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about it and what you think about it.

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Kenny Schwegler: Yeah,

so how you started with.

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Whole day

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Aino Vonge: Mm-hmm.

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Kenny Schwegler: I hear that a lot.

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feedback afterwards about that whole day?

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Did you get any feedback at all and.

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Aino Vonge: Yes, there was.

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There was one person

who was very negative.

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Afterwards, and he thought it had been

a, a tremendous waste of time because we

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could just have looked at the diagrams.

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And then there was a, a, a group that

were really, really happy because they

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had understood things in a different way

than they'd understood things before.

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And then there were some people who were

pretty new to the system, who were really,

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really happy about spending so much

time with it because as they said, you.

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You just get to understand something a

lot better if you're talking to people

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about it instead of just reading the

documents and looking at the code.

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So I did have still one person who

was negative about it, but all the

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others were either really happy

or moderately happy, but it is,

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you can't win them all.

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Kenny Schwegler: I, reminds me a bit of

dropping some new people in the center

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of London and let them navigate the

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Aino Vonge: Yes.

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Kenny Schwegler: Without a map,

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Aino Vonge: Yeah.

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Good luck.

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Kenny Schwegler: just cross

and have fun and like that.

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That's what reminds me

a little bit about the,

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Aino Vonge: Yep.

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Kenny Schwegler: map.

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Aino Vonge: Yes.

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Kenny Schwegler: Yeah,

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Andrea Magnorsky: Well, uh, it's

kind of like a, it's, it's very, if.

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can very much relate

to that in, many ways.

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And, just kind of wonder, do you, did you

repeat the, like what hap basically you

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got results, did you do the more of this?

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Aino Vonge: I didn't do the same

thing with the same group, but I was

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invited for subsets of the group to

facilitate shorter discussions about

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things so facilitating, for instance.

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We need to brainstorm about what

microservices to, to start with now.

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So this, this part, this whole day

was just about getting a shared

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understanding before they even started.

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And then we had shorter workshops

with smaller, subsets of the team

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where we would look at specific parts

of the systems and how can we cut,

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uh, the, the microservices out and.

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It.

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I never, so the most negative person,

I never facilitated that person again.

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not because the person was fired,

but just because I wasn't invited.

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It's always by invitation.

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I'm, I'm asked to do some things.

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I'm not pushed to do some things.

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Yeah.

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Kenny Schwegler: Yeah,

so did is that person.

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So I was wondering, right, I, I've seen

this happen before that that person that

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is the most negative is that also the

person generally talks a lot in this

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session and, How, if you go with the

other groups, did you experience any

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resistance from this other person, even

though you were not invited to facilitate?

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But I can imagine like you're in

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Aino Vonge: Hmm.

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Kenny Schwegler: group and yeah, but

this person didn't want X, Y, Z, and

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Aino Vonge: Yeah,

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Kenny Schwegler: get any You know?

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Aino Vonge: I did.

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Kenny Schwegler: go deal with that?

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Aino Vonge: Yes I did.

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I did with one of the soap subsets,

there was still some, the system,

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what you call some intervening

from, from that person's side.

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And one of the things that I'm now

regretting that I didn't do, if we

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should talk about that as well, is, This

person was a very, was a very skeptic

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person and and a very loud person.

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and I now have words for that,

which I didn't have at that time.

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Now, I would call him a skeptic and

a loud mouth, and I would, I would

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add some different, I would use some

different patterns for that person.

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For instance, the, the Champion Skeptic

from Linda Rising's book, fearless

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Change is, is a pattern that I use

a lot for people who are skeptic.

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And what I do is that I try to

get on a one-on-one with them.

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And I explained to them that their

skepticism towards me or towards

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the workshop towards changing the

monolith into microservices, whichever

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part it was, which I'm still not

sure about which part it was, but I

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would talk to that person one-on-one

and I would say, your skepticism.

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Is valuable.

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we need people who are skeptical.

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We need people who are questioning.

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We need people who are not just

accepting things for facts, without

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really understanding or being convinced.

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and then I would say to that person,

but right now we want to try to do this.

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It has been decided that

this is what we're doing.

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So just complaining about this

situation is not getting us anywhere.

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We should instead try to

be constructive about it.

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So could you help me be more constructive?

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About the next workshop that I do.

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That is what I would've done now.

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But it takes courage and it takes

understanding and sometimes thinking

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on your feet if you have more than 10

people in the room and you have a lot of

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people to pay attention to, and you know

that feeling when you start sweating a

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little bit and you want to seem cool.

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That's how I felt at that time,

and I think now that I'm wiser.

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Andrea Magnorsky: Yeah.

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Aino Vonge: Hmm.

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Andrea Magnorsky: It's funny, it

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Aino Vonge: Yeah.

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Andrea Magnorsky: of, uh, Evelyn's,

um, Evelyn's takeaway, like her

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learning was learn to listen to your

physical reactions and hard agree

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on when you're facilitating, being

aware of your body, telling you

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things that you don't want to know.

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Aino Vonge: Yes, I, I

agree very much with that.

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And it's something that I've worked with

a lot myself because I've had some, You

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can call it anger management issues.

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I get very excited, but it goes in all

directions and I can get, especially

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when I was younger, I could get really

frustrated with some people and,

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learning to, as you say, read those or

experience those feelings in myself.

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And, and maybe look at

them from the outside.

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That's what I tried to do.

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I tried to think, Ooh, interesting.

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I'm getting angry.

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Why am I getting angry and trying

to move away from myself and looking

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at myself from the outside saying,

what am I really angry about?

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Am I angry that.

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I cannot answer these questions.

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Am I angry that they're getting personal?

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Am I angry that I don't know what to do?

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Now, what does it actually come from?

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Does it come from fear?

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Does it come from something else?

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Because anger, anger I've learned

now is a secondary emotion.

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It's based on something else.

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You get angry because you're afraid.

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You get angry because you're sad.

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You get angry because

you're frustrated, right?

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So anger in itself is just a symptom

of something more interesting.

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So that's how I've worked with it.

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Mm-hmm.

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Andrea Magnorsky: nice to know.

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Um, and I have another question for you.

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Um, I was wondering how do you, you

know, you, you said how you're invited

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to do something, you know, and it's the.

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The consultant's dilemma, I guess, is,

is you, someone needs you for something

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and that means at least a subset of

the people that, that you're working

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with is actually want you there.

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But the rest is, you know, the rest

of the people you are involved with

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is, so you dunno, and you do some work

and there's some delineated thing,

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that it you're doing, doing there,

and then you don't know what happens.

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Like you are trying, you, you have an

objective in this case, and in most cases,

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Aino Vonge: Mm.

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Andrea Magnorsky: in your case was

like, well, help us understand better

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our, our monolith so that we can maybe

break it up or how to break it up.

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And it was about trying to find the,

the beginning, the kickoff of, of that.

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Right.

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so I assume possibly if, if not, please

correct me that that was what you were.

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Trying to do, but A, do

you know you've succeeded.

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But b, more that's,

that's my real question.

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How do you know you have done

the necessary side effects

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to achieve their outcome?

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Aino Vonge: That's, that's a very

interesting and very difficult

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question because if, if you're, if

you're only sent in there as, as a

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consultant to, to do something, then.

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That's something that I've

become a little bit better at.

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I've become better at asking

what are the success criteria?

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What is it that you want to

achieve from having me there?

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It's a bit like when I'm teaching now,

instead of just thinking what content do

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I want to teach the students, I'm thinking

about what learning goals do I have?

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What skills do they have afterwards?

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So I'm thinking about what is

it that they want to get out of.

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What I'm doing.

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And that's also why I often start with

expectation management in the beginning

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of the workshops, to make them reflect

about what they expect to get out

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of it and to make me understand what

will make this a success for them.

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And to come back to your

question about how do I know

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whether it worked, I sometimes.

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reach out to the company again

to ask what actually happened

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with the things that we did.

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did you come anywhere with that?

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Did you actually make the changes?

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And sometimes they say, sadly,

there was a lot of, politics that

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changed and organizational changed

and, and it was changed again.

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But most of the times when I reach

out, they say, well, we actually,

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we did get something outta it.

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Maybe not.

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All that we expected,

but at least some of it.

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And in this particular case, I have

a spy in the organization, that I

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drink red wine with from time to time.

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And then I could ask,

how is it actually going?

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And so I know that they actually moved

on with it, and I'm sure they could have

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done it without me, but, at least I know

that I didn't ruin anything for them

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waste their time.

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Andrea Magnorsky: I'm gonna, actually,

so I, I do a of this types of

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workshops and, can promise you that

you had a much better impact than.

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Just not making it worse.

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And maybe they could have done it, but

they would've done it a lot slower because

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sharing knowledge and having a cohesive or

more congruent understanding is invaluable

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to the point that is invaluable.

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And so very few people can ask for it.

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no, I'm gonna disagree with you,

but for the all the very nice

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reasons, which is that I think you

actually made a massive impact.

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Aino Vonge: Thank you, Andrea.

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Now I feel very good.

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I was starting to get a bit

depressed about thinking about it.

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Andrea Magnorsky: No.

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Kenny Schwegler: That's the hard part.

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me and Evelyn talk a lot about some

workshops we do around our book.

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Right.

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And we are always, always scared

because we come in a little bit

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about social science, right.

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Evelyn's part.

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And, and every time afterwards we

call up and like, oh, this was fun.

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But before we call each other up and like.

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They won't like this.

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And, and I'm gonna give a talk

about ranking theory and that's

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so far away from these engineers.

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And then afterwards, you know, and

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Aino Vonge: Yeah.

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Kenny Schwegler: I still, and

every time we talk to each other

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because, and now you are, you're

telling about We are, we are joking.

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Yeah.

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Come on.

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We need to just tell each

other this constantly.

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Aino Vonge: Yes.

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I think you're right.

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Kenny Schwegler: because, yeah, because.

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And, and that's one thing that

pops up to me sometimes when you

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do this or a training or anything.

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And you see people having

like, some epiphanies I saw

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Aino Vonge: Mm-hmm.

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Kenny Schwegler: but then they go back

to their working environment and even

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though they, they had this instant

gratification, which is for instance,

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different than when you go to a gym,

which is not instant gratification,

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that will happen over months and months.

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But in this case, they get it,

but then they go back and then.

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then it might get, it might have

changed, but it's hard for them to

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experience that, that it was positive.

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What, and even though you just said,

I know it's, I'm not really sure

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if it was me that catalyzed this or

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Andrea Magnorsky: Well, I,

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Kenny Schwegler: That's

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Andrea Magnorsky: I think this is

like, it is one of those things

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that are really hard to, to measure.

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You can see

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Aino Vonge: Mm-hmm.

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Andrea Magnorsky: between companies

that have had something like

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this and companies that have not

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Aino Vonge: Yeah.

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Andrea Magnorsky: of this.

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Aino Vonge: Yep.

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Andrea Magnorsky: it's kind of, I love

to hear your take, especially, I know,

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but obviously it, but it's, it's, I feel

like it breaks down some of the silos.

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It can be the catalyst

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Aino Vonge: Mm-hmm.

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Andrea Magnorsky: people that didn't know

that they were aligned in ideas, thoughts,

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and mental models to kind of go like.

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Actually, I thought this person

was completely wrong initially.

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But then as we went through learning

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Aino Vonge: Yep.

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Andrea Magnorsky: what we, each of us

know, you cannot converge somewhere.

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and that's exactly where,

where I think it can, where you

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can see the value basically.

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If there was a way to capture that

and say this is where the value is.

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But I think it's just

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Aino Vonge: Yeah.

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Andrea Magnorsky: really to to know.

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Aino Vonge: Yeah.

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And that what you're saying now,

Andrea, makes me think about.

380

So when I'm facilitating retrospectives

or talking about facilitating

381

retrospectives, I'm, I'm always quoting

my, my late father who said, to understand

382

everything is to forgive everything.

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And that was actually, now that I think

about it based on what you just said,

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some of what happened in that workshop.

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Because when they understood what others

understood, then they understood why

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they did those stupid things, right.

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Because they had a

different understanding.

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Andrea Magnorsky: I love that.

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That's really nice.

390

Kenny Schwegler: That's a good one.

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Andrea Magnorsky: Yes.

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Kenny Schwegler: I think that's

a good wrap of, this story and

393

I think what I get out of it.

394

One heuristic is whenever you

do facilitation for yourself, at

395

least try to get some feedback.

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Aino Vonge: Yes.

397

Kenny Schwegler: do it for the wine.

398

Aino Vonge: Yeah, at

least do it for the wine.

399

Yes.

400

Kenny Schwegler: Good.

401

Self.

402

Self, how do you say it?

403

Giving yourself that attention that

actually this is the impact because

404

it's so hard to get that out of that

one workshop because it takes longer So.

405

Aino Vonge: It is, it is.

406

And you, and sometimes you're just gone.

407

And then you start thinking,

okay, they, they laughed.

408

They gave me good evaluations right after

the workshop or right after the talk.

409

But does it actually have an impact?

410

Am I actually making a change?

411

So, so going back and asking or, or

even getting red wine with, with a spy

412

from the company is, is, has really

been good for, for my self worth.

413

Andrea Magnorsky: All right, well on note.

414

This is, the end of this episode.

415

Thank you.

416

I know for your time and your story,

Kenny, we'll see you the next time.

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Bye.

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Aino Vonge: Thank you for having me.

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Bye-bye.

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Kenny Schwegler: Bye bye.