Rapid, Effective and Scalable Growth

Some thoughts regarding rapid, effective and stable Scaling and Integrations:

• Evolve Talent at scale. Human resources are the most effective and most disruptive in scaling. Invest in education and across-the-board learning. Companies often hire a Musician and then expect her to write screenplay.
• Robust and multi-channel Integrations with extensive fail over support – Workflows, processes, run books, escalation paths.
• Regular testing for performance, functions and services. Even stress and Chaos testing should be instituted.
• Institute Metrics based feedback – Across-the-board discussions - APM, observability, traceability and dashboards
• Be on Top of Regulatory requirements to prevent disruptions. No deferment of conversations as their appear in regulation. There is massive crackdown coming on Privacy and Security, especially in FinTech and Healthcare, as governments change around the world to Liberal and not so large business friendly.
• Do not over rely on PoCs, Pilots and happy path Fairy Tales – They never FAIL, and they never SCALE
• Respect long-gestation period on some features or projects – Like planting Bamboos and Olive trees, Takes long time before fruition
• Customer feedback loop and Fast market reaction - Fast and adaptable solutions and applications and products, knowing customers unlocks growth, especially once our product portfolio grows
• Learn from University case studies, from other industries, read the market and have regular multi-stakeholder collaborations
• All major decisions based on solid data, analytics, market feedback and expert consultation
• Never accept Success as is. Humility is critical. Many winning armies were defeated as the celebrated victories drenched in careless drink were destroyed by night time attacks by the defeated but not vanquished enemy
• Collaborative approach with vendors and partners – Regular conversations and information sharing
• Identify reuse but don’t ABUSE the REUSE. It may be wasteful and disruptive to make a square peg fit a round hole
• Constant architecture watch and involvement - There must be an Enterprise Architecture Overseeing committee 
• Have a migration and integration path for different flavors of applications for faster Acquisitions
• Analyze and make decisions fast. Go and No-Go should be done like Mother Nature – swift and brutal and effective
• Constant rewiring and adjustments of metrics, dashboards – Knowledge is now a Super Power, even Iron Man cannot last a few minutes without constant data feeds.
• We must stick to the mission. There should be NO ambiguity on end goals. It is easy to get lost in the weeds and forget the reason we entered the dark forest.
• Agility is critical - Failures are hard to recognize, harder to accept and hardest to reverse if neglected. Fail early and fail fast.
• Balance innovation, risk management, DevOps simplicity and scaling

Trilemma of Scalability