5 Valuable Pieces to the Mystery of Scaling and Succeeding With Your New App

The excitement of seeing some code being written for the first time on a new product can blur our perspective. For example, in a rush to see "stuff," we neglect important questions about distance needs and how we will operate, maintain and scale the application once live. I will outline the five main choices you have to avoid the regret of poor development choices for your new app.

Before writing code and designing screens as part of the development process, I implore you to conduct a rigorous Product Discovery. Check out this course or these posts on how to discover your product.

After Product Discovery and before development starts, you need to plan the software architecture - highlighting how the UI, Application and Data work together.

The critical question before development is how we will operate, maintain and scale the application once live.

You start with a high-level list of functional and non-functional requirements. The functional requirements refer to what the system does - login, dashboard, search, etc.

You then combine 'what' with the how - this is called non-functional requirements. These functions could be specific measures of scale and performance, such as 99.9% uptime.

So before starting development, you need to get everybody together and agree on the requirements and resulting software architecture. Let's look at the pros and cons of the five leading software systems architecture:

1. Monolithic architecture: In this architecture, the entire application is built as a single, self-contained unit. This means that the application's components are tightly coupled and interdependent, making it difficult to modify or scale individual parts of the system.

• Pros: Easy to develop and test, simple deployment for small to medium-sized applications.
• Cons: Difficult to scale, limited flexibility and extensibility; small changes can require rebuilding and redeploying the entire application.
• Examples: Traditional desktop applications and legacy enterprise systems.

2. Client-server architecture: The application is split into two parts: the client, which runs on the user's computer or device, and the server, which runs on a remote machine. The client communicates with the server over a network connection, typically using a protocol such as HTTP.

• Pros: Separation of concerns between client and server, scalable, enables a wide range of clients to access the application.
• Cons: Complexity of the server-side application and infrastructure, performance issues can arise due to network latency and difficulty maintaining consistency across different clients.
• Examples: Web applications and online gaming systems.

3. Microservices architecture: In this architecture, the application is split into a collection of small, independent services, each of which performs a specific function. These services communicate with each other over a network, typically using a lightweight protocol such as REST.

• Pros: Enables integration of heterogeneous systems and technologies, supports reusability and interoperability of services, scalable and flexible.
• Cons: Complexity of the system and infrastructure, higher initial development and maintenance costs, complex managing service dependencies and versioning.
• Examples: Amazon Web Services, eBay.

4. Service-oriented architecture (SOA): Similar to microservices architecture, SOA is an architectural pattern for creating and deploying distributed software components across a network. In SOA, these components are designed to be loosely coupled and interoperable, and they communicate with each other using a standardized set of protocols and interfaces.

• Pros: Enables integration of heterogeneous systems and technologies, supports reusability and interoperability of services, scalable and flexible.
• Cons: Complexity of the system and infrastructure, higher initial development and maintenance costs, difficulty managing service dependencies and versioning.
• Examples: Amazon Web Services, eBay.

5. Event-driven architecture: In this architecture, the application is built around the concept of events, which are triggers that cause specific actions to be taken within the system. These actions allow the design to be highly responsive to changes in its environment and handle many concurrent users or requests.

• Pros: Highly responsive to changes in the environment or user interactions, scalable and resilient, supports asynchronous processing and communication.
• Cons: It can be challenging to understand and debug, requires careful planning and management of events and event processing, and can lead to a complex system with many event handlers and processing paths.
• Examples: Internet of Things (IoT) applications and financial trading systems.
  

It's worth noting that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for software architecture. Instead, the choice of architecture will depend on the specific requirements of the application and the organization developing it.

Software architecture is the foundation of any software product. It defines the system's structure, including its components, its relationships, and how they interact. It also represents non-functional requirements like performance, scalability, reliability, and security. These factors are critical to any software product's success and need to be considered early in the development process.

Choosing the appropriate software architecture significantly impacts the product's success. It determines how the product will perform, how easy it will be to maintain and scale, and how secure it will be. Poor software architecture can lead to performance issues, poor user experience, and an inability to meet the needs of the business.

By deciding on the software architecture before we start building the product, we can ensure that we are making informed decisions about the product's design and development. This approach allows us to identify potential issues early in the process and make changes before they become costly or time-consuming. It also allows us to optimize the development process and ensure that we make the most efficient use of our resources.

The right software architecture is critical to the success of any product. It sets the foundation for the system's design, performance, scalability, and security. By deciding on the software architecture early in the development process, we can ensure that we are making informed decisions and building a product that meets the needs of our customers and the business.