A SQL story in 11 words or less

rob_farley — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:29:41 GMT

Success Quietly Looms.

Not quite 11 words, I know. I’ll put more at the end. Definitely SQL related though, right? (And it’s even an acrostic!) Tom LaRock started this, and Stacia Misner tagged me. Monday is over now though (heck, it’s well into Tuesday here), so I’m not going to tag anyone else.

I’m not talking about our success (even though I’m in the process of hiring my sixth employee), I’m talking about the impact of having a system that you’ve implemented well, and finding that people actually want to use it. It’s the hope of every project. You don’t want to implement something only to find that people use the old system.

And yet when you implement a system which becomes successful, there are unexpected problems.

Look at Twitter. A few guys sit around and think how useful it would be to send SMS messages to a central location where everyone can read it. It becomes a worldwide phenomenon, and has very serious (and very public) problems scaling. Brilliant idea, but success quietly loomed.

Scalability needs to be a forethought, not a reaction. If you do your job well, you will have underestimated the required workload. It’s a fact of life. Luckily, SQL easily lets you plan things nicely. Systems can be tuned when small, allowing for growth that doesn’t cripple.

The principle also applies on a personal level. If you do well at things, you’ll be given more, and need to work out how to scale. Right now my business is growing, and that’s a good thing. I’ve had to hire extra people to allow for the growth, and I’m trying to find time to get into CRM Online and various other systems. I’m needing to adjust to the challenges of having a company of six (nearly seven) people, having to lean on God more than ever, and (like Aaron) making sure I prioritise the things that are important. I’m not leaving the community – I see that as an important part of running my business – but I do need to make sure that my family doesn’t suffer too much simply because there is more that needs doing than ever before.

As for the other eight words in my short story (and acrostic):

Did Anybody Think About Backups And Saving Everything?

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A SQL story in 11 words or less