Defaults and caches outlive the sprint that set them.
[ essay ]
Systems have memory: feature flags left on, cron jobs nobody owns, retry policies tuned for a demo, indexes added for one report.
The algorithm — routing, ranking, caching, scheduling — encodes past constraints. When those constraints change, the behavior persists until someone audits inputs and weights.
Schedule periodic reviews of: defaults in config, automated jobs, ML or heuristic weights, permission templates. Ask what problem was this solving when it was added?
Deletion is architecture. Removing a stale rule is as important as adding a new one.
What you ship becomes policy whether you intended it or not.
