Scaling Fast Book
74 articles · all categories
18 articles from 2025 · show all
November 2025
*People* detangle a ball of mud
Ball of mud is the world's most popular software architecture. The one we all use at work. But it sucks to work with. So what do you do?
The unreasonable effectiveness of stack ranking
Stakeholders are silly people. Everything feels important and urgent. Stack ranking helps
October 2025
Make sure it works first
Explore the importance of functionality over elegance in Swizec's latest piece. Learn from his experience of tripling an engineering team's size within a year.
September 2025
Leadership lessons from growing 3x in 1 year
So this talk is my attempt to step back and write down some of the things I've learned. Hope you find something to apply in your team.
August 2025
Yes it's like spinning plates
In a fast-growing company software engineering feels like spinning plates. Nothing ever stays fixed.
Quick update on Scaling Fast, my next book
Your goal is not to write a book, it's to change how your reader thinks
May 2025
Software architecture IS Conway's Law
Can you even have architecture before there's a team?
Common abstraction traps
Here's a few common abstraction traps that suck you in, look like they improve your code, then turn into bad ideas as your system grows.
DRY – a common source of bad abstractions
The worst and hardest to maintain code that I've seen or written has been in pursuit of DRY
April 2025
Say no to abstract code
The trick, then, is to keep related code close together to reduce context boundaries and to limit the amount of relevant detail so it fits in your working memory.
re: The Industrialization of IT
I guess if AI is what it takes to finally get people to care about architecture and team structure then mission accomplished?
Always deploy at peak traffic
A hard-won lesson for ya: Always deploy when you've got lots of traffic.
The difference between a product and a project
A project is something you do, a product is something you own.
March 2025
Sprint vs Shape Up vs Kanban
Whenever I talk about sprints, someone mentions Shape Up. So you have 9 week sprints – what's the difference?
Why sprints
For the past few months I've been introducing sprints into a chaotic startup that's been growing so fast everyone's got whiplash. Since August, 5 engineers turned into 12. I think it's starting to work.
Principles of high output engineering teams
A few engineering principles I aim to instill in every team I join. Lead or not.
February 2025
Code yourself out of the job
Let go of your legos and let others do the work.
January 2025
What I learned from Accelerate
Accelerate is the empirical research behind books such as The Phoenix/Unicorn Project and (parts of) Software Engineering at Google. I loved it.