An analogy used to explain why technology and infrastructure investment decisions need a Product Vision behind them, not just the immediate scope in front of you. Building a two-story duplex when you don't know a skyscraper will eventually be needed there works fine in the short term — until the skyscraper is actually required, at which point the duplex has to be torn down and re-platformed from scratch at far greater cost than if the foundation had been poured for the taller building from day one.
The analogy is used specifically to diagnose the cost of a Vision Vacuum: No Vision, Not Bad Vision, Is the Real Failure Mode: without a shared view of where the product/company is headed, engineering and infra teams size their architecture to the problem in front of them, and every new scale threshold forces a reactive rebuild. It pairs with the observation that team topology under this condition gets reorganized roughly every five months as new threats or opportunities emerge, rather than being deliberately sized against a known horizon (see Team Topology by Business Vertical (Durable Ownership Teams) for the opposite, durable-ownership approach).
Apply: when a stakeholder pushes back on 'over-building' for a scope smaller than what's requested, use this analogy to explain that the investment size should match the vision's future scale, not just the current ticket — the cost of under-building compounds if the larger need is already foreseeable.