Bento vs Soup: Why Your Salesforce Org Architecture Matters

Too many cooks spoil the broth—and in Salesforce, too many hands create a soup org: tangled, bloated, and brittle. Some consultants call it “happy soup.”

We call it what it is: a mess.

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The Soup Problem

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For most Salesforce orgs, the evolution from green pasture to happy soup is a matter of when, not if. A little customization here, a quick update to a flow in production, some "temporary" code that becomes permanent. Add a rotating cast of consulting firms, each with their own standards, naming conventions, and architectural preferences, and in the words of Carl Weathers: baby, you got a stew goin'.

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Too Many Cooks, Zero Communication

Here's a typical progression:

• Consulting Firm A builds your initial setup (their way)
• Consulting Firm B adds new features (completely different approach)
• Consulting Firm C "fixes" things (while breaking others)
• Your internal team tries to maintain it all (good luck)

None of them talk to each other. Each leaves behind their own coding style, documentation standards (if you're lucky), and architectural decisions. Version control is rarely used, and when it is, it usually culminates in a deployment, which is tantamount to installing a woodchipper at the end of your factory line... but that's a topic for another post.

Before long, you have a tangled mess where:

• Changing one thing breaks three others
• Nobody knows why that critical process works (or stops working)
• New features require major surgery to implement
• You're afraid to update anything
• Developers spend more time troubleshooting than developing

Businesses commonly resort to imposing strict change management policies to mitigate risk, but the increased administrative overhead leads to new genres of dysfunction and often spikes turnover rates.

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Enter the "Bento" Org

A bento org takes the opposite approach from soup org. Like a Japanese bento box where each item has its own compartment, a bento org is a composition of packages, each one having clear boundaries and its own version control repository. Functionality is delivered primarily through installations not deployments. Where applicable. see Metadata Coverage Report https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/metadata-coverage

Sales Cloud extensions go in one box. CPQ integrations in another. Service Cloud enhancements over here, and common utilities easily accessed by all. Each package includes everything it needs: Lightning Apps, Permission Sets, Tabs, Objects, Flows - the complete solution, neatly contained.

Why Bento Beats Soup

When solutions are properly packaged:

• Updates don't break unrelated features
• New functionality deploys cleanly
• Testing happens in isolation
• Dependencies are crystal clear

One of the primary advantages of adopting a bento org structure is the ability to isolate and manage dependencies effectively. When a new feature or update is introduced, it can be tested and executed independently without impacting other parts of the system. This isolation is crucial for maintaining system integrity and ensuring that changes don't lead to unforeseen issues.

Effective change management becomes a matter of fact, rather than a moving goalpost.

Built on Hard-Won Experience

We've worked in 200+ orgs, and the pattern is always the same: soup everywhere.

The fix is always the same, too: compartmentalize.

The good news? You don’t have to start over. We specialize in turning soup orgs into bento orgs—gradually, strategically—because every org deserves an efficient, manageable, and scalable Salesforce environment.

Compartmentalized solutions. Proven DevOps practices. No more chaos.

Ready to unmake soup?