The Art of Scalability [A book review]
I decided to write reviews on books I read going forward and the book under this review is “The Art Of Scalability” written by Martin Abbott and Michael Fisher.
Prior to reading this book, I have read articles, blogs around scalability but I’ve never had to read a full book which made this one interesting for me.
In this book, the authors blow out the fog on scaling and help us to see what works and how to get there.
In it, we learn much about the endless aspects of technical operations. And this is invaluable because without strong fundamentals it’s tough to get much built.
Who will benefit from reading this book?
Everyone in an organization stand to benefit from reading this book, some aspects might be more suitable for individuals in certain roles. Some of the generic categories are:
- Technology Leaders
- Software Engineers/Developers
- Product/Project Managers
- Business Leaders
Scalability is a combination of art and science where the art is seen in the interactions between platforms, organizations, and processes, which impact any structured approach in a company. The science of scalability is embodied within the method by which we measure our efforts and in the application of the scientific method.
There are three key components to a successful scalability plan. Not one should be traded off as they are equally important when scaling your product(s). The components are:
1) People: People architect the systems, write or choose the software, and they deploy the software payloads and configure the servers, databases, firewalls, routers, and other devices. People make the tradeoffs on what pieces of the technology stack are easily horizontally scalable and which pieces are not.
2) Process: Processes allow your teams to react quickly to crisis, determine the root cause of failures, determine capacity of systems, analyze scalability needs, implement scalability projects, and many more fundamental needs for a scalable system. These are vital if you want your system to scale with your growth. As an example, if you rely on an ad hoc response to restore your service when an outage occurs, you are going to experience much more downtime than if you have a clear set of steps that your team should take to respond, communicate, debug, and restore services.
3) Technology: This cannot be overemphasized. It drives the business either as the product itself or the infrastructure allowing the product to be brought to market.
What’s the next step for your organization?
1. Perform an assessment. Rate your company on organization, processes, and architecture. Use an outside agent if necessary.
2. Define where you need to be or your ideal state. How large is your company going to grow in 12 to 24 months? What does that mean for your organization, processes, and architecture?
3. List the differences between your actual and ideal situations. Rank order these differences from most to least severe.
4. Action plans. Put together an action plan to resolve the issues identified in the previous steps. This can be in the form of a single prioritized plan, a short-term and long-term plan, or any other planning increments that your company uses.
Does this book provide a blueprint on scalability?
I hope it does for you as it has for me. The book may not give you everything you need to scale but I hope it lets you ask the right questions to make decisions that work for you.
Till the next :)
