You published a reference architecture. Teams are not following it. What is likely wrong?

What the interviewer is testing

Whether you diagnose an adoption failure as a product problem rather than a compliance problem.

The likely causes

It is not implementable. A diagram with boxes and no templates, modules or working example means each team must derive the implementation themselves — which is most of the work, so the reference saved them little.

It is too abstract to follow. "Use an event-driven approach with a message broker" does not answer which broker, what the message envelope looks like, how schemas are governed, how errors and retries are handled, or how it is monitored. Those are the decisions teams need made.

It does not say when it applies and when it does not. Presented as universal, it gets misapplied, fails, and is then discredited entirely.

It does not fit their constraints, and there is no route to raise that.

It is stale. Written against the technology and constraints of two years ago, now directing teams towards decisions the organisation has since learned are wrong. This is actively harmful, not merely unhelpful.

Following it is slower than not following it — the decisive factor in almost every case.

The fix

Back it with a paved road: templates, modules, a working reference implementation, and platform support, so following it is the fastest route rather than an additional obligation.

Be specific, naming technologies and configurations.

State applicability explicitly, including where it does not apply.

Maintain it on a cadence with an owner, and version it.

Talk to the teams that did not adopt it and treat what they say as product feedback.

What a strong answer adds

The test of a healthy reference architecture: it describes what good teams already do rather than instructing teams from outside. Reference architectures derived from a successful implementation and then generalised are adopted; ones designed in isolation by a central function are not.

Common weak answers

Mandating compliance. Producing a more detailed document.