Many companies have made headlines with recent outages. By incorporating software resilience into your strategy, you can ensure you don't become one of them.
On October 4, 2021, Facebook, along with its subsidiaries and platforms including Instagram and WhatsApp, experienced a worldwide outage for several hours. Users were left without service, generating frustration and disappointment. It may have even led some to abandon one or more social media networks altogether.
This is just one of many disruptions and damages that a number of large and popular companies have faced in recent years. And although companies like Facebook may recover – even despite momentary user dissatisfaction – small and new companies and startups will have a much harder time maintaining consumer loyalty.
This is why today's software must be resilient. Developers need to create their products anticipating problems that may occur. This preparation will save you time and money in the future – and avoid losing users.
What is software resilience?
You know what resilience means: it's essentially the ability to bounce back and resist problems. Software resilience applies this concept to technology. In other words, resilient software is able to withstand misfortunes and heal from problems and unexpected events.
In today's world, software resiliency is essential to keep technology running smoothly. Instead of shutting down completely when it encounters problems, it will continue to operate when those problems occur, regardless of the extent of the disturbance.
Resilience does not mean that problems will never occur. Instead, it simply means that the system will be able to respond without failing – weathering storms as they occur. This is the opposite of the wait-and-see approach. Companies are planning ahead to take into account the unexpected, incorporating it into their plans from the beginning.
How to ensure software resilience
1. Automate
If you can automate , do so. Manual work is much more prone to errors. Automation allows developers and other team members to facilitate workflow more efficiently. Furthermore, when the system encounters errors, it will be able to recover automatically, effectively correcting itself without human intervention.
2. Diversify
From a resilience perspective, diversifying your infrastructure using multiple vendors can help. This way, if a supplier goes through a period of downtime, you can turn to another, minimizing the impact and scope of the problem. Therefore, fewer users will be affected by the issue.
3. Scan consistently
Detecting possible errors in your products becomes easier when you start routine checks. This will allow you to assess the resilience of your technology in multiple aspects, from security to capacity. The scans themselves put a strain on your systems, which will reveal problems before they affect your users in real time.
4. Validate
To validate your code and systems, ensure that any changes you make are automatically verified. This way, you can be sure that when you make these changes, you will not disrupt the system or negatively affect the environment in which it is located. You can even build this verification into the ecosystem at the beginning.
5. Test
Test , test TEST. This is the best, most comprehensive approach to evaluating the health of your software — and ensuring it will withstand any interference issues that may arise. Qualified quality control testers must perform a variety of assessments, from load testing to performance testing. This will help you see how your software will behave and respond to many different types of conditions and understand if adjustments need to be made.
6. Ensure broad coverage
You should not limit your resilience strategies to just one circumstance. You must have broad coverage, addressing all environments where your systems and software operate. This likely includes a cloud-based environment and on-premises locations, along with hybrid and other possible situations.
7. Built-in redundancies
Build redundancies into your code. This way, if any downtime occurs in your systems, you can turn to a backup method to ensure adequate coverage. Your systems can turn to your backup provider rather than going completely offline and disrupting your operations.
8. Practice real-time integrations
Integrate your resilience mechanisms with the systems you already have in your company. You should be able to get real-time feedback from a variety of support systems, so you don't miss it when an issue occurs – you'll be notified immediately and be able to resolve it quickly and efficiently.
9. Ensure scalability
Resilience is also tested when you try to scale your products as your company grows. Because scalability is often a goal for many organizations, you must build your products and systems with scalability in mind from the beginning.
Think long term, considering what they can become, not just what you want them to be now. That way, when you grow, your software will be more resilient as you go through this process.
10. Collaborate and communicate
And then, of course, there are the interpersonal skills that increase resilience. Keeping everyone updated and informed about your efforts will ensure that all workers who are contributing to the project are informed. This coordination helps ensure that you are operating effectively as a unit and that everyone understands the objectives associated with the project and the problems they may encounter in the future.
When your business experiences outages and other problems with its systems, your customers suffer – and so do you. That's why it's so important to build your software with this in mind. Resilience means having a strong product with characteristics and facets to withstand turbulence. By prioritizing it, you will not only create better software, but you will also solidify your reputation as a quality organization.
