This seems... Shortsighted? You can get any development project done without documentation; I don't think that's up for debate. The question is, can you make c

This seems... Shortsighted? You can get any development project done without documentation; I don't think that's up for debate. The question is, can you make changes to this project, improve on it, explain it to another team during an acquisition or due diligence: 5+ years down the line? And if you can, will that new development timeline be accelerated if you had documentation and diagrams to work from? What happens when a new CEO comes in, hires a new Engineering Manager, and 85% of the devs quit in protest? Will a new team be as effective as possible without that documentation? In my experience the above scenarios are quite common in start-up and "scale-up" size companies. Where there are a lot of things in flux and nobody has a plan 5 years out. Then, lo and behold, it's 5 years later and everyone is stuck picking up the slack instead of developing new/improved products. And you're right, it can be a case of misalignment of goals and vision; not everyone cares about the long term. But if your company isn't thinking of problems further out than 6 months then you might have a different problem to address...