Reading a system diagram like a product manager

You do not need to be an engineer to get real value out of an architecture review. You need a small set of questions that work on almost any diagram.

Follow the data, not the boxes

Boxes are components. What matters more is what flows between them, and what happens when that flow is slow, missing, or wrong. Ask what happens to a request that never gets a response.

Find the single points of failure

Look for anything with only one arrow going into it. That is usually where an outage will start, and it is a fair question to ask in the room.

Ask what changes if this succeeds

If this system works exactly as designed and adoption is high, what breaks first. Capacity planning questions are product questions too.