Stockholm is always a great experience. Its blend of history, innovation, and stunning waterfront views make this city special. One of the highlights this time around was seeing the Vasa Ship, a masterpiece of ambition and overengineering— a powerful reminder of timeless design lessons.
On August 10, 1628, the warship Vasa, the pride of the Swedish Navy, set sail on its maiden voyage. The ship was a masterpiece—lavishly adorned, heavily armed, and built to be the most powerful warship of its time. The Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus, had envisioned it as an intimidating floating fortress to project Sweden’s military might.
But just 1,300 meters from shore, in full view of spectators and dignitaries, Vasa was struck by a gust of wind, tilted, took on water, and sank. It had barely made it out of the harbor.
For 333 years, Vasa lay at the bottom of Stockholm’s harbor until an ambitious recovery effort in the 1960s pulled it from the depths, leading to its preservation and exhibition in the now-famous Vasa Museum.
It’s easy to look at Vasa and dismiss it as a historical curiosity, an engineering failure from an era when science was still catching up with ambition. Vasa is a tale of overengineering, misaligned priorities, and the dangers of boosting non-functional features over structural integrity—a syndrome I’ve seen time and time again in modern implementations.
Overengineering: The Race to Complexity Without Stability
What sank Vasa? Simply put: it was overengineered. The king’s vision for an unparalleled warship resulted in requirements creep—constant changes and additions that pushed the ship beyond what the original design could support.
Feature Creep
Originally planned as a standard warship, Vasa was redesigned mid-construction to carry double the firepower. Instead of a single gun deck, it was fitted with two full decks of cannons, making it top-heavy.
Decor Over Functionality
The ship was elaborately decorated with sculptures and carvings, adding unnecessary weight without contributing to its ability to sail or fight.
Few highlights of high priority features.
Ignored Load Testing
A stability test was conducted before launch where sailors ran from side to side to simulate motion. The ship swayed so dangerously that the test was stopped early. The results were ignored.
Before / After
In modern software and infrastructure, this pattern repeats itself. Organizations push for AI-powered automation, blockchain integration, and microservices orchestration—all before ensuring their core system is even stable. Like Vasa, they add layers of complexity without considering the weight they are placing on an already unstable foundation. I mean... even when it comes to some small aspects, it's literally a daily reality, aside from the loud buzz terms.
The Recovery Operation
Fast forward to the 20th century. When Vasa was rediscovered in 1956, the challenge was not just finding the ship but figuring out how to pull it out of the sea without destroying it.
A massive salvage operation began, involving divers tunneling beneath the ship to thread cables under its hull. Over several months, teams carefully lifted the ship in stages, stabilizing it in shallower waters before finally bringing it to the surface.
Even then, the challenges weren’t over. The ship’s wooden structure had absorbed seawater for centuries. Exposure to oxygen led to rapid deterioration, forcing preservationists to quickly adapt and use polyethylene glycol (PEG) to replace the water in the wood, preventing it from crumbling.
This part of Vasa’s story mirrors what happens when an overengineered system collapses and teams must salvage what’s left. Whether it’s a failed cloud migration, a collapsed AI model, or a high-profile software outage, the recovery process is often more delicate than the original build. You can’t just yank a failing system back to life—you need to carefully lift, stabilize, and preserve before making drastic changes.
Don’t Let Your Project Become the Vasa
Functionality Over Features. Vasa was a marvel of design, but a warship that can’t stay afloat is useless. The same rule applies elsewhere: if your system is unstable, adding features won’t fix it. Prioritize core architecture, scalability, and resilience first.
Don’t Ignore Testing Failures. The ship’s stability test clearly showed a fatal flaw, but instead of delaying launch, leadership ignored the results. We see this in tech when teams push untested products into production, ignoring red flags from QA or system monitoring.
Stakeholder Pressure Kills Good Engineering. Vasa was built under immense pressure from the Swedish king, who demanded changes mid-construction and rushed the timeline. The same happens when executives push for unrealistic deadlines, forcing engineers to sacrifice stability for speed.
Salvaging a Broken System Requires Patience. Pulling Vasa from the sea was an exercise in incremental recovery and preservation. When a system is broken, don’t rush to fix it all at once—stabilize, refactor, and prevent further damage before rebuilding.
Lessons
The tragedy of Vasa wasn’t just that it sank—it was that its failure was completely avoidable. If the team had focused on stability first, tested properly, and resisted unnecessary complexity, Vasa might have been a successful warship instead of a museum relic.
Whether it’s a software deployment, migration, or a new model rollout—ask yourself: Are we prioritizing functionality over vanity? Are we ignoring warning signs in testing? Are we building for stability first, or just adding complexity?
Because ultimately it doesn’t matter how impressive a system looks if it can’t survive its real challenge. This is a great reminder not to forget to focus on essentials as well as "details and bolts" of design.
Build wisely, test rigorously and sail successfully.
