System Considerations
On the road from prototype to product!
I wish that the experience of building a rapid prototype yields two outcomes:
- Capturing the excitement and energy of blue sky thinking, and the art of the possible
- A sober sense of the long term and sustained commitment that is required to bring such a system to production.
While the leap might seem significant, it's crucial to remember that each step on this path provides us with a unique learning opportunity, a chance to innovate, collaborate and build something truly fit for purpose.
The topics listed below are not hurdles but stepping stones towards a mature, robust system. Each deserves thoughtful consideration with all stakeholders.
- Business Alignment: Aligning the system design with business goals and strategies.
- User Experience: Ensuring an intuitive, user-friendly system that boosts user satisfaction and adoption.
- Security: Prioritizing data privacy and system security to protect against breaches and meet regulatory requirements.
- Data Governance and Integrity: Guaranteeing reliable, accurate, and consistent data over its entire lifecycle.
- Privacy Compliance: Adhering to relevant regulations (such as Protected B).
- Regulatory Compliance: Meeting necessary standards, like accessibility and internationalization.
- Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Planning: Ensuring the system can quickly recover and maintain continuity of operation in the event of a disaster.
- Performance: Building a system capable of handling an appropriate volume transactions efficiently, ensuring a smooth user experience.
- Observability: Implementing robust monitoring, logging, and tracing to ensure system health and performance can be effectively tracked and issues swiftly identified.
- Cost-Efficiency: Implementing strategies that optimize resources and reduce unnecessary expenses.
- Scalability: Designing a system that can efficiently scale to handle increasing data or user traffic.
- Maintainability: Building a system that can be efficiently maintained and updated over time.
- Adaptability: Ensuring that the system can adapt to changing business needs and technological advancements.
- Interoperability: Designing the system to interact seamlessly with existing or future systems.