Trade Review
Praise for The Art of Scalability, Second Edition
“A how-to manual for building a world-class engineering organization with step-by-step instructions on everything including leadership, architecture, operations, and processes. A driver’s manual for going from 0 to 60, scaling your business. With this book published, there’s no excuse for mistakes—in other words, RTFM.”
—Lon F. Binder, vice president, technology, Warby Parker
“I’ve worked with AKF for years on tough technical challenges. Many books address how to correct failing product architectures or problematic processes, both of which are symptoms of an unspoken problem. This book not only covers those symptoms, but also addresses their underlying cause—the way in which we manage, lead, organize, and staff our teams.”
—Jeremy King, chief technology officer and senior vice president, global ecommerce, Walmart.com
“I love this book because it teaches an important lesson most technology-focused books don’t: how to build highly scalable and successful technology organizations that build highly scalable technology solutions. There’s plenty of great technology coaching in this book, but there are also excellent examples of how to build scalable culture, principles, processes, and decision trees. This book remains one of my few constant go-to reference guides.”
—Chris Schremser, chief technology officer, ZirMed
Praise for the First Edition
“This book is much more than you may think it is. Scale is not just about designing Web sites that don’t crash when lots of users show up. It is about designing your company so that it doesn’t crash when your business needs to grow. These guys have been there on the front lines of some of the most successful Internet companies of our time, and they share the good, the bad, and the ugly about how to not just survive, but thrive.”
—Marty Cagan, founder, Silicon Valley Product Group
“A must read for anyone building a Web service for the mass market.”
—Dana Stalder, general partner, Matrix Partners
“Abbott and Fisher have deep experiences with scale in both large and small enterprises. What’s unique about their approach to scalability is they start by focusing on the true foundation: people and process, without which true scalability cannot be built. Abbott and Fisher leverage their years of experience in a very accessible and practical approach to scalability that has been proven over time with their significant success.”
—Geoffrey Weber, vice president of internet operations/IT, Shutterfly
“If I wanted the best diagnoses for my health I would go to the Mayo Clinic. If I wanted the best diagnoses for my portfolio companies’ performance and scalability I would call Martin and Michael. They have recommended solutions to performance and scalability issues that have saved some of my companies from a total rewrite of the system.”
—Warren M. Weiss, general partner, Foundation Capital
“As a manager who worked under Michael Fisher and Marty Abbott during my time at PayPal/eBay, the opportunity to directly absorb the lessons and experiences presented in this book are invaluable to me now working at Facebook.”
—Yishan Wong, former CEO, Reddit, and former director of engineering, Facebook
“The Art of Scalability is by far the best book on scalability on the market today. The authors tackle the issues of scalability from processes, to people, to performance, to the highly technical. Whether your organization is just starting out and is defining processes as you go, or you are a mature organization, this is the ideal book to help you deal with scalability issues before, during, or after an incident. Having built several projects, programs, and companies from small to significant scale, I can honestly say I wish I had this book one, five, and ten years ago.”
—Jeremy Wright, chief executive officer, b5media, Inc.
“Only a handful of people in the world have experienced the kind of growth-related challenges that Fisher and Abbott have seen at eBay, PayPal, and the other companies they’ve helped to build. Fewer still have successfully overcome such challenges. The Art of Scalability provides a great summary of lessons learned while scaling two of the largest internet companies in the history of the space, and it’s a must-read for any executive at a hyper-growth company. What’s more, it’s well-written and highly entertaining. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Kevin Fortuna, partner, AKF Consulting
“Marty and Mike’s book covers all the bases, from understanding how to build a scalable organization to the processes and technology necessary to run a highly scalable architecture. They have packed in a ton of great practical solutions from real world experiences. This book is a must-read for anyone having difficulty managing the scale of a hyper-growth company or a startup hoping to achieve hyper growth.”
—Tom Keeven, partner, AKF Consulting
“The Art of Scalability is remarkable in its wealth of information and clarity; the authors provide novel, practical, and demystifying approaches to identify, predict, and resolve scalability problems before they surface. Marty Abbott and Michael Fisher use their rich experience and vision, providing unique and groundbreaking tools to assist small and hyper-growth organizations as they maneuver in today’s demanding technological environments.”
—Joseph M. Potenza, attorney, Banner & Witcoff, Ltd.
Table of Contents
Foreword xxiii
Acknowledgments xxvii
About the Authors xxix
Introduction 1
Part I: Staffing a Scalable Organization 7
Chapter 1: The Impact of People and Leadership on Scalability 9
The Case Method 9
Why People? 10
Why Organizations? 11
Why Management and Leadership? 17
Conclusion 19
Chapter 2: Roles for the Scalable Technology Organization 21
The Effects of Failure 21
Defining Roles 23
Executive Responsibilities 25
Individual Contributor Responsibilities 30
A Tool for Defining Responsibilities 35
Conclusion 39
Chapter 3: Designing Organizations 41
Organizational Influences That Affect Scalability 41
Team Size 44
Organizational Structure 51
Conclusion 69
Chapter 4: Leadership 101 71
What Is Leadership? 72
Leadership: A Conceptual Model 74
Taking Stock of Who You Are 76
Leading from the Front 78
Checking Your Ego at the Door 79
Mission First, People Always 80
Making Timely, Sound, and Morally Correct Decisions 81
Empowering Teams and Scalability 82
Alignment with Shareholder Value 83
Transformational Leadership 84
Vision 84
Mission 87
Goals 89
Putting It All Together 90
The Causal Roadmap to Success 94
Conclusion 95
Chapter 5: Management 101 99
What Is Management? 100
Project and Task Management 102
Building Teams: A Sports Analogy 105
Upgrading Teams: A Garden Analogy 107
Measurement, Metrics, and Goal Evaluation 111
The Goal Tree 114
Paving the Path for Success 115
Conclusion 116
Chapter 6: Relationships, Mindset, and the Business Case 119
Understanding the Experiential Chasm 119
Defeating the IT Mindset 122
The Business Case for Scale 124
Conclusion 127
Part II: Building Processes for Scale 129
Chapter 7: Why Processes Are Critical to Scale 131
The Purpose of Process 132
Right Time, Right Process 135
When Good Processes Go Bad 139
Conclusion 140
Chapter 8: Managing Incidents and Problems 143
What Is an Incident? 144
What Is a Problem? 145
The Components of Incident Management 146
The Components of Problem Management 149
Resolving Conflicts Between Incident and Problem Management 150
Incident and Problem Life Cycles 150
Implementing the Daily Incident Meeting 152
Implementing the Quarterly Incident Review 153
The Postmortem Process 153
Putting It All Together 156
Conclusion 157
Chapter 9: Managing Crises and Escalations 159
What Is a Crisis? 160
Why Differentiate a Crisis from Any Other Incident? 161
How Crises Can Change a Company 162
Order Out of Chaos 163
Communications and Control 168
The War Room 169
Escalations 170
Status Communications 171
Crisis Postmortem and Communication 172
Conclusion 173
Chapter 10: Controlling Change in Production Environments 177
What Is a Change? 178
Change Identification 179
Change Management 180
The Change Control Meeting 191
Continuous Process Improvement 192
Conclusion 193
Chapter 11: Determining Headroom for Applications 197
Purpose of the Process 198
Structure of the Process 199
Ideal Usage Percentage 203
A Quick Example Using Spreadsheets 206
Conclusion 207
Chapter 12: Establishing Architectural Principles 209
Principles and Goals 209
Principle Selection 212
AKF’s Most Commonly Adopted Architectural Principles 214
Conclusion 222
Chapter 13: Joint Architecture Design and Architecture Review Board 225
Fixing Organizational Dysfunction 225
Designing for Scale Cross-Functionally 226
JAD Entry and Exit Criteria 228
From JAD to ARB 230
Conducting the Meeting 232
ARB Entry and Exit Criteria 234
Conclusion 236
Chapter 14: Agile Architecture Design 239
Architecture in Agile Organizations 240
Ownership of Architecture 241
Limited Resources 242
Standards 243
ARB in the Agile Organization 246
Conclusion 247
Chapter 15: Focus on Core Competencies: Build Versus Buy 249
Building Versus Buying, and Scalability 249
Focusing on Cost 250
Focusing on Strategy 251
“Not Built Here” Phenomenon 252
Merging Cost and Strategy 252
Does This Component Create Strategic Competitive Differentiation? 253
Are We the Best Owners of This Component or Asset? 253
What Is the Competition for This Component? 254
Can We Build This Component Cost-Effectively? 254
The Best Buy Decision Ever 255
Anatomy of a Build-It-Yourself Failure 256
Conclusion 258
Chapter 16: Determining Risk 259
Importance of Risk Management to Scale 259
Measuring Risk 261
Managing Risk 268
Conclusion 271
Chapter 17: Performance and Stress Testing 273
Performing Performance Testing 273
Don’t Stress over Stress Testing 281
Performance and Stress Testing for Scalability 287
Conclusion 288
Chapter 18: Barrier Conditions and Rollback 291
Barrier Conditions 291
Rollback Capabilities 297
Markdown Functionality: Design to Be Disabled 300
Conclusion 301
Chapter 19: Fast or Right? 303
Tradeoffs in Business 303
Relation to Scalability 306
How to Think About the Decision 307
Conclusion 311
Part III: Architecting Scalable Solutions 315
Chapter 20: Designing for Any Technology 317
An Implementation Is Not an Architecture 317
Technology-Agnostic Design 318
The TAD Approach 323
Conclusion 325
Chapter 21: Creating Fault-Isolative Architectural Structures 327
Fault-Isolative Architecture Terms 327
Benefits of Fault Isolation 329
How to Approach Fault Isolation 336
When to Implement Fault Isolation 339
How to Test Fault-Isolative Designs 341
Conclusion 341
Chapter 22: Introduction to the AKF Scale Cube 343
The AKF Scale Cube 343
The x-Axis of the Cube 344
The y-Axis of the Cube 346
The z-Axis of the Cube 349
Putting It All Together 350
When and Where to Use the Cube 352
Conclusion 353
Chapter 23: Splitting Applications for Scale 357
The AKF Scale Cube for Applications 357
The x-Axis of the AKF Application Scale Cube 359
The y-Axis of the AKF Application Scale Cube 361
The z-Axis of the AKF Application Scale Cube 363
Putting It All Together 365
Practical Use of the Application Cube 367
Conclusion 371
Chapter 24: Splitting Databases for Scale 375
Applying the AKF Scale Cube to Databases 375
The x-Axis of the AKF Database Scale Cube 376
The y-Axis of the AKF Database Scale Cube 381
The z-Axis of the AKF Database Scale Cube 383
Putting It All Together 385
Practical Use of the Database Cube 388
Conclusion 393
Chapter 25: Caching for Performance and Scale 395
Caching Defined 395
Object Caches 399
Application Caches 402
Content Delivery Networks 407
Conclusion 408
Chapter 26: Asynchronous Design for Scale 411
Synching Up on Synchronization 411
Synchronous Versus Asynchronous Calls 412
Defining State 418
Conclusion 422
Part IV: Solving Other Issues and Challenges 425
Chapter 27: Too Much Data 427
The Cost of Data 427
The Value of Data and the Cost-Value Dilemma 430
Making Data Profitable 431
Handling Large Amounts of Data 434
Conclusion 444
Chapter 28: Grid Computing 447
History of Grid Computing 447
Pros and Cons of Grids 449
Different Uses for Grid Computing 454
Conclusion 457
Chapter 29: Soaring in the Clouds 459
History and Definitions 460
Characteristics and Architecture of Clouds 463
Differences Between Clouds and Grids 467
Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing 468
Where Clouds Fit in Different Companies 476
Decision Process 478
Conclusion 481
Chapter 30: Making Applications Cloud Ready 485
The Scale Cube in a Cloud 485
Overcoming Challenges 487
Intuit Case Study 491
Conclusion 493
Chapter 31: Monitoring Applications 495
“Why Didn’t We Catch That Earlier?” 495
A Framework for Monitoring 496
Measuring Monitoring: What Is and Isn’t Valuable? 503
Monitoring and Processes 504
Conclusion 506
Chapter 32: Planning Data Centers 509
Data Center Costs and Constraints 509
Location, Location, Location 511
Data Centers and Incremental Growth 514
When Do I Consider IaaS? 516
Three Magic Rules of Three 519
Multiple Active Data Center Considerations 525
Conclusion 527
Chapter 33: Putting It All Together 531
What to Do Now? 532
Further Resources on Scalability 535
Part V: Appendices 537
Appendix A: Calculating Availability 539
Hardware Uptime 540
Customer Complaints 541
Portion of Site Down 542
Third-Party Monitoring Service 543
Business Graph 544
Appendix B: Capacity Planning Calculations 547
Appendix C: Load and Performance Calculations 555
Index 563
