Scalability - Explained

Introduction

Google, Amazon, Facebook - we all know of tech companies which have been very successful at scaling up the products they built. They all started as small businesses- Amazon even began in a garage. At the same time, we have also heard of those companies who could not scale up and perished.

The ability to scale the platforms is a key differentiator between long-lasting, successful enterprises and failed ventures. When potential investors evaluate a venture, one of their top concerns is if the venture has a product that would scale up. Hence, it is important that organisations must endeavour to bake the art of scalability into their product development DNA.

What is Scalability?

Scalability “is the measure of a system’s ability to increase or decrease in performance and cost in response to changes in application and system processing demands”. Another definition of scalability “the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system”. In general, for any enterprise, especially in software domain, scalability means ability to cater to increase in customer growth or data growth by increasing resources in a cost-efficient manner.

Scalability related issues are faced by organisations in every industry sector when demand increases and production needs to be ramped up. For software companies, a product’s popularity could mean adding millions of customers in few weeks’ time, scalability is a continuous and mission-critical challenge.

Failure to implement measures of scalability will mean that diseconomies of scale have a more significant impact on business functions, with examples of this being in terms of internal and external communication, inefficiencies in organisation, and specialised equipment not suited to high output. 

Why is Scalability important?

The benefits of successfully scaling a product for an organisation are as below:

• Enabling the processing of a larger customer base in a cost-efficient manner
• Expanding revenues and operations seamlessly
• Increasing profits in shorter timeframe
• Targeting untapped markets
• Reducing costs pertaining to development, deployment and operational costs in tandem with business
• Attracting more funding from investors

How do you implement Scalability?

So, the million-dollar question is how do organisations implement scalability in their product lines. Although, there are many different ways to achieve scalability, a common theme is to use a well-defined framework which addresses scalability related challenges holistically. In this post, i am going to adapt the ideas outlined in the book The art of scalability.

We will look at ways of implementing scalability in a product/platform related activities across three key drivers PPT: People, Process and Technology.

Firstly, everyone in the organisation across hierarchies has a role to play in scaling a product. Some key factors we need to look at to ensure scalability can be achieved is designing appropriate team size ( 6-15 is a rule of thumb for lower and upper limits for team size but it can vary depending on the organisation). The organisational structure be it functional design or matrix design can both work well to achieve scalability and we need to use the appropriate one as per the situation. Another key area is role clarity which ensures the execution of scalability related initiatives and tracks their progress to completion. Lastly and more importantly, strategic vision is the most crucial driver of scalability in an organisation and without it, scaling up will remain a muddled and start- stop exercise.

Secondly, processes can help a great deal in achieving scaling a product. Well-defined processes help an organisation to perform routine tasks in a short period of time creating leverage for challenging and unexpected action items. Depending on the organisation size and complexity of business operations, it may be prudent to look at implementing processes for Development, Deployment, Testing ( Unit and Load), Change Management, Escalations and Support. Many frameworks are available such as Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and ITIL which can help one to think about processes to implement. Ultimately, the level and complexity of actual process implementation is a decision which needs to be taken considering the organisation needs and can be calibrated periodically.

Thirdly, the ability to scale the products at a technical level is a crucial skill. Following a set of architectural principles such as the 12 architectural principles outlined in The art of scalability is a good framework to follow across teams. Based on customer and data growth, product scalability along all the 3 axes: X-axis ( monolithic load balancing across multiple instances and servers), Y-axis ( functionality split based on function/resource such as microservices architecture) and Z-axis (sharding or split based on customer group) can be implemented as per need. Well-designed caching mechanisms and geographical redundancy can further help to achieve scaling requirements.

I have tried to summarise achieving scalability (although it is a very vast topic)and for those interested in knowing more can go here.

Conclusion

Scalability is a holy grail for all organisations who want to create long-lasting growth and increase shareholder’s value. Organisations that are more reliant on labour will find scaling difficult, however automating production and other processes, as well as ensuring that training is accessible and requires little resources are examples of automation that will ensure changes to company direction or growth will be manageable. 

****Majority of thoughts and ideas expressed in this article are adapted from The art of scalability by Abbott - Fisher.