Indexes, queues, caching, observability and deployment hygiene — the eight checks we run before a platform takes 10x traffic.
Scaling problems are rarely mysterious. They are missing indexes, synchronous work that belongs in a queue, and no visibility into what is slow.
Our pre-scale checklist covers query plans, connection pooling, background jobs, cache invalidation strategy, error budgets, structured logging, automated rollbacks and load-tested headroom.
Running it takes about a week. Skipping it costs considerably more.