Satire
Explaining the Thing to the Room
The concept is clear in your head. The room has 12 people with 12 different mental models. You have 15 minutes.
You have a concept. It is genuinely complex. You have thought about it for three weeks.
You open the presentation. Slide one says: "Architecture Overview."
What Actually Happens
The first question comes at minute 2. It is about something on slide 8. You skip ahead. A second question arrives — about slide 2, which you just left. Someone asks you to take a step back. You take a step back. Now the business stakeholders are lost. You go forward. Now the technical team is impatient.
Someone asks if this is like Salesforce. It is not like Salesforce. You say "somewhat similar, but..." and spend 4 minutes explaining why it is not Salesforce.
At minute 14, someone says: "Can you send the deck? I'll review offline."
They will not review it offline.
“This explanation would benefit from a story point estimate and a clear definition of done. I'm also going to need a retrospective on why it wasn't clear the first time.”
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Let's talk architecture →How a Builder Should Respond
You prepare two versions of the explanation before the room: one for decision-makers, one for implementers. You lead with the outcome, not the mechanism. You state the one thing you need the audience to walk away believing — and you build every slide toward that single point. Questions that pull you off-track get parked in a visible list: "Good — I'll address that in the next section." Clarity is not a talent. It is preparation.
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