Sometimes an engineered solution is indeed overkill, but on anything that will be in use for a few years or built by a few developers, it is not. My own experie

Sometimes an engineered solution is indeed overkill, but on anything that will be in use for a few years or built by a few developers, it is not. My own experiences of herding a bunch of developers to build a product has taught me that shortcuts and worry-about-it-later decisions almost always blow up in your face eventually. An engineered solution can still be lightweight and simple, it's just that care has been taken to make sure it can grow to meet its future needs. My current philosophy to approach the start of a really big system is to map out the bits that aren't there yet but will be. I don't see this as violating YAGNI because only those parts needed today are being built and nothing more, but they're built to slot into the rest of the system if and when it is developed.