Shipping fast matters — everyone knows that.
But most teams optimize for speed of first shipment, not speed of tenth shipment.
The Decay Curve
Almost every system follows the same trajectory:
- Month 0–3: Beautiful velocity
- Month 4–9: First serious scaling pain
- Month 10–18: "We need to rewrite it"
- Month 19+: Maintenance mode or slow death
The difference between systems that live 10 years and systems that die in 18 months isn't talent.
It's deliberate investment in longevity primitives from day one.
The Longevity Checklist
1. Explicit Boundaries & Contracts
Every service should have a published contract (API schema + stability guarantees).
2. Data Ownership & Event Sourcing
Stop scattering state. One source of truth per domain — communicate changes via events.
3. Automated Boundary Tests
Contract tests, chaos testing, and backward compatibility checks must run on every deploy.
4. Cost & Performance Budgets
Every team should have a monthly cost budget and p95 latency SLO — enforced in CI.
5. Upgrade Paths That Don't Hurt
Design for incremental migration: feature flags, dual-write patterns, versioned APIs.
The Real Cost of Speed
The fastest way to ship v1 is usually the slowest way to reach v10.
The teams that win long-term aren't the ones that ship fastest in month 1.
They're the ones that can still ship with confidence in year 5.
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