Towards Supportability

Towards Supportability is a presentation I delivered to the Wellington .NET Users Group on 5 August 2009.

In this presentation, I focus on the long term care and feeding of our systems once development is complete, covering five guidelines:

Documentation - It's not an optional part of a project. Start early, update it frequently and keep it up to date.

Rehearse - Never do something for the first time in production. Practice every process, simplify wherever possible, apply automation wherever appropriate.

Security - consider your approach to security early. Authentication, Authorisation and Disclosure all need to be discussed.

Diagnostics - As developers, we can pry off the lid and see what's going on. Systems administrators can't do this - we need to provide them with information.

Simplicity - Avoid introducing any complexity that isn't necessary. Retain only essential complexity.