Leverage Maps #2: Modeling Infrastructure Reusability

How does reusable infrastructure actually scale across projects?

As I was closing out a task on an internal infrastructure effort, I wanted to understand the inner workings of infrastructure usage in organizations over time. I wanted to model the system. Something that made the feedback loops, rate-limiting, and reuse dynamics visible.

This diagram started there. It reflects a mix of:

• Light threat modeling work I’d done on a previous project
• Systems thinking ideas from An Elegant Puzzle by Will Larson and https://lethain.com/how-to-safely-think-in-systems/
• A desire to put those ideas into actual practice

“Project Infrastructure Reuse: System-Level View”

The goal was to answer: How does infrastructure actually get reused? What slows that down across projects?

The model highlights:

• Feedback from completed projects into future proposals
• Architecture rate-limiting to avoid burnout or chaos
• The drag of technical debt on reuse velocity
• Engineers as both the drivers and the pressure points in the system

This version is a high-level view, but I’m thinking of breaking it down into subdiagrams for some of the core rate flows, Infrastructure Technical Debt Rate and Engineering Architecture Rate, to explore how they evolve and interact.

The insight so far?

Reuse doesn’t scale by luck. It takes visibility, feedback, and intention.

If you’ve built or broken systems like this, I’d love to hear how it’s gone and what you’ve learned along the way.