Growing Software

System Scalability

System scalability describes the ability of the program or system to maintain acceptable performance as the volume of users and data increases significantly. Scalability means that the usability and speed of the system do not degrade significantly as usage increases. Obviously, at some level, all systems will fail, but setting a reasonable maximum expected usage size and knowing that the software can handle that size is what scalability is all about.

When a young company starts developing a new project, development focuses first on creating core functionality, and scalability is often an afterthought. The team might consider scalability of the system at times, but this objective is not analyzed, monitored, or properly tested ...