Maintainability

Information on this page is taken from Designing Data-Intensive Applications by Martin Kleppmann.

It is well known that the majority of the cost of software is not its initial development but its ongoing maintenance - fixing bugs, keeping its systems operational, investigating failures, adapting it to new platforms, modifying it for new use cases, repaying technical debt, and adding new features.

We can and should design software in such a way that it will hopefully minimize pain during maintenance, and thus avoid creating legacy software ourselves. To this end, we pay particular attention to three design principles for software systems:

  • Operability
    • Make it easy for operations teams to keep the system running smoothly. Data systems need good monitoring, good support to automation, and good documentation.
  • Simplicity
    • Make it easy for new engineers to understand the system, by removing as much complexity as possible from the system. Abstraction is one of the best tools we have for removing complexity.
  • Evolvability
    • Make it easy for engineers to make changes to the system in the future, adapting it for unanticipated use cases as requirements change. Also known as extensibility, modifiability, or plasticity.