

How to reduce emergency workload for small startup - dcaldwell

We're a 3 person team launching a web app soon.  Only one of us is a developer.  What are other options rather than just having him on call for technical emergencies 24/7?
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pzxc
If he is the most capable IT guy you have, there really is no choice but to
have him as the "fixer of last resort". You can minimize his burden by:

\- making sure you don't call him if you can fix it yourself, or if anyone
else BUT him can fix it

\- identifying probable or possible areas of failure and have him provide a
little advanced training for how to handle incidents

\- making ABSOLUTELY sure that any incidents that do occur, are addressed with
systems to prevent or repair any recurrence of the same problem. Preferably
automated systems whenever possible. You should be doing this anyway, but if
you want to know how to minimize the emergency workload, the best way is to
make sure each emergency happens only once and never happens again. Thus the
number and severity of emergencies will naturally decrease over time.

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kondro
Even hiring more staff just before launch doesn't really solve this problem.

If you've got good code and tested the product well the quantity of
emergencies at launch should be quite low as unless you are launching a new
product to a lot of existing users you're unlikely to get a large amount of
usage at launch.

As you scale up your customer base and your business, be sure to think of your
lone developer first and provide him with extra resources (and you with less
risk) by increasing your development team.

Good luck!

