It's a busy day in the office, business-as-usual. The customer is chasing the team for deliverables, which includes database schema design… The development team, counting on their previous experience, doesn't take long to create a design using a well-known RDBMS. The lead ensures the schema is in good-old third normal form… Done! Fast forward to six months down the line...
“Makarand, I am so excited. As I discussed with you last week, I have been busy all week thinking about the solution I would like to build.” Yash was bubbling with ideas as we walked into our favorite coffee shop for the breakfast. “My new year resolution has given me great strength. Now there is no one stopping me.” “Sounds like a plan Yash. Good that you...
“I am flooded with new ideas.” Yash and I were having our Saturday breakfast at our favorite place along with a very large cup of coffee. “My new year resolution is to take the plunge, get over the fear, and start something of my own.” “Wow, Yash! I am with you. Finally, you made up your mind. I am so...
It's been a good long vacation nearing year-end, family, celebrations, outing… After the team is back to work, they notice the production web application is running on … neither 2 nor 4 instances but a whopping 10 instances! A hurried inspection shows auto-scaling kicked off as per the thresholds set by the team when the cloud infra was acquired....
“Makarand, I am curious to see your post next week. I read your advice about not working during the holidays. I want to see whether you follow your own advice.” Rajesh was challenging me over the coffee break. “Yes, off course. You will definitely see something.” “Let me guess, I have understood a few things from your work style. You will finish some of the...
It's a new issue reported by customers which says the cloud is not processing messages from devices fast enough… The product manager takes stock of the resources and raises a request for scaling up the infra... Sounds familiar? While the request goes through its approval workflow, a seasoned technical architect walks through the code along with the developers, only to...
“I am not able to sleep at night. There is too much work in the project, please move me to some other project.” As Dhanesh was complaining I could hear the frustration in his voice. Obviously, there was something wrong. “Can you tell me something more about it?” Proposing a solution without hearing the problem, can make the situation worse. Also, many times...
Everything can go wrong – Build Contingencies and Switches “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong” ...
“Makarand, this new development work I am handling is very delicate. I think it is going to break at several places.” Ritu was a new entrant in the delivery team. Great that she was very enthusiastic and willing to drive for perfection. “Yes, you are right, anything that can fail will fail. That is exactly why we need someone like...
How do you seamlessly roll out your platform for a 25+ Million user base (hopefully) without causing service disruption? There is no easy and canned solution for this. Based on the type of application and the criticality you have to do what works best for you. Once your platform is ready to be rolled out, based on our experience I would...
