System Design: A Little Planning Goes a Long Way

making a case for more time decision making early on

As individuals and as collective teams or organizations, we are all looking for speed and efficiency when launching a new big feature, or brand new application. Time is money and we seem to be encouraged to launch as speedily as possible.

This mentality seems to force many people to power through the development stage of building early. However as many devs know, there are always unforeseen roadblocks and often changes in the architecture need to be made.

We cannot predict every roadblock we will encounter along the way, and often times over planning is a waste of time as well. However hitting a speed bump in our system architecture, can become a major time killer that could have been avoided in initial design. Not to mention that the lack of initial planning can lead to major scaling issues that involve massive redesigns.

So Where is the Sweet Middle Ground?

Luckily there are some important points we can check for to help us feel confident that we have thoroughly looked to the future.

1. Clear Goals

This seems obvious but it is a crucial step even in a project pressed for time. We are all…