You’re not done until it’s tested, deployed and running.

When working hard to build a site you think users will rave about, it’s critical to not lose sight of the operations support required to test, deploy and keep your site running. The best site in the world is a complete waste of time if pages load slowly and you constantly have to be apologize for being offline.

The unfortunate reality of infrastructure is that if it’s performing well, it’s invisible. Most of the time most of us in the United States never think about electricity, running water or being able to pick up the phone and call someone. (This wasn’t the case growing up in Nigeria, but that’s another story.) The same is true when we think about websites. We focus on what we can see and interact with and not on what’s behind it, unless something is not working.

At Judy’s Book, infrastructure and ops form a significant part of what we do. Interacting with data feeds (inbound and outbound), setting up and configuring machines for development, test and production, managing builds and monitoring servers all take time and resources. Planning for and anticipating the ops impact of your product decisions is critical.

Make sure your ops team doesn’t feel like they are invisible.