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How To Refactor Serverless Applications the Right Way
And avoid losing momentum while doing it
Building modern apps is exciting. You get to learn new technology, converse with people in the industry that follow the same patterns, and explore new designs every day.
Imagine you are given the opportunity to build a greenfield application and you opt for tech decisions that have good industry backing and support, like serverless. You build your app over the course of months or years and when you go live, you’re done! Right?
Not even a little bit.
First of all, software is never done. You have invested in a time and energy black hole. There are new features and enhancements to build, defects to fix, and optimizations to be had.
You also have to take a step back, look at what you’ve done, and ask yourself “is this still relevant?”
If you took two years to build your production app (which is a totally acceptable time frame), chances are there have been a significant number of enhancements and new managed services released by your cloud vendor. Did you freeze your app at the moment in time when you started development?
Honestly, it’s easy to do. But what should you do when you find yourself in that situation? You could say you have a modern-ish app and call it a day. Or you could roll up your sleeves and bring the tech up to the latest and greatest.
But Why, Though?
The answer to this is short and sweet: total cost of ownership.
You want to keep your app as up-to-date as possible in an effort to make the total cost of ownership low. You want to minimize how much it costs the company to maintain your application. The lower the maintenance costs, the higher the profit margin. The higher the profit margin, the greater likelihood that you get to do it all over again!
If you have questions on how to troubleshoot an issue with modern services, there’s a giant community of developers out there with answers. If you hire someone new, you have a large pool of individuals you can pull from with the skills necessary to build your app. Your developers will be happier and more productive while continuously enhancing…
