The Basics of Resilient Application Development in 3 Months

Throughout my 20-year tenure as a technical consultant, one consistent problem has been that clients need help with application resilience.

Many complain about constant bugs, broken features with every update, and high costs with no guarantees. What surprises me, however, is that they often have to be taught some rudimentary stuff.

But think about how relieved they will be once these problems are fixed and their applications become more resilient.

The Fix

Below is my usual method for turning things around, which has a habit of yielding results in as little as three months:

1. Kanban and WIP Limits: Keep focus and reduce complexity. Find bottlenecks.
2. Rigorous Testing: Catch issues early, ensure modules work together, simulate real user scenarios, and prevent old bugs from resurfacing.
3. CI/CD: Removes manual work and involvement. Optimize pre-verifications and increase confidence.
4. Isolated Testing, Code Reviews, and Pair Programming: Catch mistakes early and improve code quality through collaboration. Ensure changes don’t affect the whole system.
5. Training and Expert Engagement: Upskill the team and bring in fresh perspectives.

Timeline and Results

Within 2 - 3 months, clients see dramatic improvements:

• Bugs are fixed quickly and effectively to support the zero-bug policy.
• Maintenance costs drop significantly by 30%.
• Required team size reduces as efficiency improves by 40%.

And all these not just once. This method can be relied on to deliver results every other time with each new project. Restarting from the beginning has proved to do wonders, so its effectiveness should always be considered.

Have you ever found yourself in this situation before? I would like to know more about what happened and if there are any questions I can answer for you. Please share your thoughts below! 🚀💡

References:

• Delivery Flow for Distributed Remote Teams
• What to do for the developer when the WIP limit is reached