I've rewritten the same CloudFormation template from scratch more times than I want to admit.
The drill never changes.
The design session goes well. The diagram looks clean. Everyone nods.
Then a week later someone tweaks the CloudFormation to add a caching layer and does not touch the diagram.
Then someone else changes the template again.
Then you are in an incident at 2am referencing infrastructure that has not existed for three months.
We tried the “update the diagram too” rule.
It lasted one sprint.
The deeper problem is that the diagram and the template are two completely separate things, maintained in two completely separate workflows. They start identical, then slowly drift apart until nobody fully trusts either one.
So I bought a domain about it.
Something is coming.
If you have ever stared at a CloudFormation template wondering why it looks nothing like the architecture diagram from last month, this is for you.
More soon.