Building an Engineering Culture
Many organizations view anything less than 99,99% availability as a bad thing. Applications should always be up and running.
That’s not how we see it. In our view, your application only has an availability problem when management decides that it hurts your business. Because often, the benefits of maximum availability simply don’t outweigh the costs.
Is Your Application Of Vital Importance To Your Clients, Like Medical Equipment?
Then, of course, downtime should be avoided at any cost. But when you run a Christmas card webshop, you can probably be down all summer without any complaints. And to users of a sports watch some downtime at night may be quite acceptable, if this means they get ten new features a month. Or if it cuts the price for a watch in half.
This is why we stimulate organizations to set a range of acceptable downtime. And to use this bandwidth proactively as room for error that can be used for innovation and to improve long-term application security and stability. Among others, this calls for applications that are built in a way that allows good observability, and that are secure and compliant by default.
Do’s and Don’ts
- Never go for 99,99 availability by default. Always weigh up the costs and loss of room for innovation.
- Assign an appropriate bottom line of uptime per application, or even specific to parts of applications
- Communication is key. Always be open about your choices and the reasons behind it, both internally and externally. In most cases, people will easily accept downtime when they know the reason.
eBook Build your unique engineering culture
A thriving engineering culture is vital for any company that wants to be a digital leader. However, it is not an off-the-shelf product you can buy. Building an engineering culture requires sustained effort, a willingness to learn, and a commitment to continuous improvement. And that’s where our eight pillars come in. Instead of rushing through them, use them to address (and resolve) the key bottlenecks in your organization one pillar at a time and create the foundation for long-term success.
Are you ready to turn your company’s unlimited curiosity and ambition into unlimited potential? Start building your unique engineering culture now!
