# Why Is Effective Kafka Change Management So Tricky?

Onboarding a new team, retiring a topic, chasing a connection that suddenly went hot: three different jobs that all stall on the same three questions. Who produces to this topic? Who consumes from it? What breaks if it changes?

Most teams answer by asking around. This short talk covers why the dependency map is genuinely hard to build, and the four approaches teams reach for when they try.

## What You'll Learn

- The three questions behind every Kafka change
- Why tribal knowledge stops scaling as the estate grows
- The four ways teams try to build a dependency map, and where each falls short