Scalability thinking of the dress maker

Today while I was getting ready to go out, took out a top and what I observed on the inner side of the top stitches was interesting.

The inner side of the top had few stitches just next to the final stitch; each of the inner stitch is close to 1 millimeter apart.

When I looked at it carefully, realized that the designer or the dress maker has made provisions for one to be able to adjust the top at home without going for a professional help.

Of course the assumption is that one goes heavier with time, so every time you add few inches just remove couple of stitches and there you go, it will be right fit for you.

The assumption was mostly realistic that with age and time people usually get fatter.

There was no provision to tighten up if you lose weight which hardly happened may be in reality.

But look at the scalability aspect that the designer has thought of, which gets missed mostly while designing systems.

If a top can be designed keeping scalability in mind why not software systems J J

Scalability as defined by Wikipedia is the capability of a system, network, or process to handle a growing amount of work, or its potential to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.[1] For example, a system is considered scalable if it is capable of increasing its total output under an increased load when resources (typically hardware) are added.

In normal terms it’s the ability of a system to handle increased load.

In most cases the system needs to be designed in such a way that it can handle higher number of users/performance requirement than estimated at the time of designing.

It could also mean adding additional hardware to make the system more scalable later on.

This need is critical for most systems which are consumer driven since the user base goes up with time by many folds.

For example a system which publishes the result of high school of a populous country will have to be able to handle few hundred thousands of users at a time.

Else the system just throws out users or doesn’t respond on time.

While designing the system this is one of the critical nonfunctional requirements the business analysts, architects need to consider.

If a tailor can think of scalability why not architects and Business analysts while designing a system.