How to Make Things Faster

Chapter 96. Preventing Problems

Firefighting is sexier than fire prevention. Here’s how you can tell: when’s the last time you saw a TV series or a full-length feature film about the good people who install commercial sprinkler systems?

I didn’t think so.

Hey, I fall into the same trap. Just look at the stories I’ve chosen to tell in this book. I have to compete for your interest, so I’ve selected the most interesting adventures I can remember.

But the even bigger truth is, I haven’t just chosen these stories for my book, I’ve chosen these situations for my career. Finding and fixing other people’s problems has made my life interesting, so I’ve sought those opportunities. Of course, many of the people I’ve helped would probably argue that they’d have been better off if their stories about performance had been a little less interesting.

The ability to fight yourself out of a problem situation has a lot of value. But it’s also valuable to be able to prevent problems from happening in the first place. Wouldn’t it be great to have both of those abilities? As it happens, the two abilities are pretty much the same, just executed at different times in the software life cycle.

You can prevent problems by doing the look at it thing earlier in your project. If you build a test system with realistic data volumes and traffic intensities, then you can use the same look at it method (Method R) that you would use to troubleshoot in production:

1. List the symptoms for which the business needs ...