Scaling - Why Small Failures Become Big Problems
Several months ago, my friends and I eagerly anticipated our coastal journey via the SGR. Every detail had been arranged; tickets secured, luggage prepared, alarms activated. The travel day unfolded without a hitch until an unexpected complication emerged. The expected arrival of one team member at the terminus faced an unexpected delay.
The reason? A simple errand that spiraled out of control. He had stopped by a supermarket to grab a few snacks for the journey. Unfortunately, the supermarket’s Point of Sale (POS) system was down. The length of lines increased. The level of frustration continued to increase. A quick 3-minute checkout transformed into a 15-minute ordeal. The train had already departed when he reached the station.
Initial impressions suggest misfortune. Expand your perspective slightly to recognize that this situation represents a scaling problem.
Scaling Issues Are Silent Until They Aren’t
When systems are small, a single supermarket, a handful of customers, failures seem manageable. If a POS terminal goes down and there are three people in line, maybe you grumble and move on. But when hundreds of customers are affected at once, the consequences become visible and costly.
In the supermarket’s case, the problem wasn’t just technical — it was about scale. They hadn’t built their systems to handle contingencies like:
- High traffic times,
- System redundancy (backup POS terminals or offline modes),
- Quick manual overrides.
At scale, tiny cracks widen into gaping holes. What was a “minor glitch” became the reason someone missed a train. And if you multiply that across dozens of customers, it becomes a reputation risk for the store.
What Scaling Teaches Us
Scaling isn’t just about adding more servers, employees, or branches. It’s about designing for failure. It’s accepting that, as you grow:
- More things will go wrong,
- More people will be affected,
- The cost of each failure will rise.
The best organizations think ahead. They build systems that don’t just work when everything’s perfect, they work when things go wrong. They ask:
- What happens if this system fails under heavy load?
- How quickly can we recover from unexpected downtime?
- Can the user experience survive even during technical hiccups?
Scaling Is an Act of Respect
At its heart, scaling is about respecting the trust people place in you.
When customers walk into your store, use your app, or board your train, they’re trusting you with their time, money, and sometimes even their safety.
Scaling properly is saying, “We honor that trust enough to prepare for the worst, not just the best.”
Because otherwise, one broken system at the wrong time can mean a missed opportunity — or a missed
At scale, tiny cracks in the system widen into chasms. What could be brushed off when you’re small becomes mission-critical when you’re serving hundreds or thousands of people simultaneously.
The supermarket’s POS system probably worked fine most days. But on a busy morning, when demand spiked and pressure mounted, the weakness showed — and it cost not just them (in lost sales and angry customers) but also us, personally.
Scaling isn’t just about doing more. It’s about doing more reliably.
Scaling Isn’t Linear — It’s Exponential
Many businesses assume that if a system works for 10 customers, it’ll work for 100 or 1,000 with just a few tweaks.
That’s rarely true.
When you scale up:
- Systems need to be more resilient,
- Processes need to be more automated,
- Customer support needs to be more responsive,
- Risk management needs to be more proactive.
At small scale, downtime might just cause inconvenience. At large scale, downtime causes lost revenue, reputational damage, and — like our missed train — broken experiences for customers.
Lessons From That Day
Sitting at the station and watching the train pull away taught him a few things about scaling that stuck with me:
-
Prepare for success.
Assume your systems will be under pressure. Build backups, redundancies, and manual processes before you need them. -
Monitor everything.
Systems usually don’t fail instantly — they degrade. Early warning signals can prevent catastrophe if you’re paying attention. -
Optimize for the worst day, not the best day.
It’s easy to design for when things are going right. True scaling is about making sure the system survives the bad days. -
Empower your people.
Sometimes, human flexibility can patch what machines miss. Having empowered staff who can make quick decisions can save both time and reputation.
Final Thought: Scale Is a Mindset
Scaling isn’t just about handling more customers — it’s about protecting the experience you promised when you were small. Your system’s flawless performance yesterday means nothing to people who missed their train, flight, or crucial meeting today because of it. When operating at scale, minor failures cause significant distress for real individuals.
That’s why developers who build systems like POS terminals aren’t just coding “checkout screens” — they’re coding trust, reliability, and people’s real-world plans.
If you’re building systems that people depend on, take it seriously. Because somewhere out there, someone just wants to buy a soda, catch a train, and make it to the beach on time — and your system might be the only thing standing in the way.
Happy coding!