Whiplash
This post was written by my good friend Jimmy Sawczuk. If you would like to write a guest post, let me know.
We ran into a problem at work last week that was, at the same time, a nightmare and exactly the kind of problem you want to have. The culprit was our latest Big Prize Giveaways promotion, and the problem was that our app had metaphorically gone from 0-60 in about two seconds, and it experienced the same thing your neck feels when it accelerates that fast: whiplash. This was my first experience with an app that was this big; even in my McJournal days, I rarely averaged more than 60,000 (well, take that number and divide by 10,000 and you have the real number) hits per day. So in the last week, I’ve learned a ton during our march to a million fans that I think can be useful to everyone, no matter how close your app is to that kind of scale.
- This is the first rule in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so it’s the first rule here: don’t panic. My first (extremely narcissistic) thought was “what? Something broke? Our server sucks!”, and my second (seriously overdramatic) thought was “I tried my best when I was writing it, how am I supposed to improve it now?” Most scaling problems are definitely manageable, and even though (for me) they’re not much fun and can be stressful, there are worse problems to have.
- Have a plan. These types of problems aren’t quick fixes, you’ll need to know what you want to do, how you intend to do it, and when. Keep in mind that unless you shut down your app completely, the slowdowns will continue to affect you as you work through the problem, so having a plan is crucial so you avoid wasting time thrashing.