The Dev World – Sergio Lema

Let’s be real: a company’s product is the company. If it’s shaky, inconsistent, or just plain frustrating to use, it doesn’t matter how good your marketing is or how passionate your team is: the whole ship is going down.

To build a product that scales and thrives, you need three things nailed down from day one: Architecture, DevOps, and Security. These are not “nice to have” — they are the non-negotiable pillars that hold your product (and your sanity) together.

I’ve Learned This the Hard Way

Years ago, I worked on an e-commerce application that completely ignored those pillars. No clear architecture. No CI/CD. No security mindset. At first, things seemed fine. The platform worked, got a some users, and celebrated with croissants.

But scaling? Total nightmare.

The application was a spaghetti mess: hard to evolve, full of manual processes. Our daily work was firefighting bugs instead of building features. And security… let’s just say I’m glad no one tested us too hard.

We didn’t start growing until we fixed all three axes. Here’s what I wish we had done earlier.

1. Architecture: Your Codebase Needs a Guideline

You need a lead developer, not just to code, but to guide the ship.

Their job isn’t to micromanage every line of code but to set clear guidelines:

• How do we name things?
• Where do configs live?
• What’s the structure for modules/components/services?

This isn’t just about aesthetics, it’s about avoiding chaos. When every developer follows their own logic, your codebase becomes… that’s not even a codebase.

Practical Tip:

• Create a living wiki where architectural decisions and conventions are documented.
• Make code reviews more about alignment than policing.

Good architecture is like clean air: you barely notice it, but try living without it.

2. DevOps: Release Day Should Be Boring

What does release day look like for you?

• Is it just another Tuesday?
• Or is it “everyone-please-don’t-touch-anything” day?

If you’re still deploying manually, running tests by hand, and praying to the CI gods… you’re wasting time and risking production.

A DevOps culture means automating everything:

• Build pipelines
• Tests (unit, integration, E2E)
• Security scans
• Deployments
• Rollbacks

The less you rely on human memory and copy-pasting terminal commands, the better your chances of sleeping at night.

Practical Tip:

• Set up a CI/CD pipeline even for side projects. The muscle memory will pay off.
• Tools like GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or CircleCI make this ridiculously easy now.

3. Security: Yes, Even Small Teams Need It

“But we’re not the target of hackers.”

Sure, until you are. Or worse, until your app accidentally leaks user data because of a dumb bug that could’ve been avoided with a basic access check.

I once received a password recovery email that CC’d every single user of the app. After deleting my account, I started laughing.

Security isn’t about paranoia, it’s about habits.

You don’t need to rotate your password every week while standing on one foot with MFA turned on, but you do need:

• Proper access controls
• Secure defaults
• Code reviews with security in mind
• An understanding of the OWASP Top 10

Practical Tip:

• Treat security like tests: part of the process, not an afterthought.
• Use security scan tools like Checkmarks, SonarQube or Snyk.
• Lint your code for secrets, use HTTPS everywhere, and don’t roll your own crypto. Ever.

Final Thoughts

You might be thinking, “That’s a lot to handle. I’m just trying to ship features.” I get it.

But neglecting architecture, DevOps, and security will cost you more, in bugs, in downtime, in lost trust.

Mastering everything overnight might be difficult. Managing a company is already hard enough. Sometimes a short external audit can uncover blind spots and save you months of headaches. It’s often cheaper (and less painful) than fixing a breach or refactoring a mess six months too late.

Want your product to grow? These three pillars aren’t optional.