Ganesh Seetharaman, Managing Director, Deloitte ConsultingDecember 20, 20244 Min ReadValentin Valkov via Alamy StockDuring peak times like holiday periods, retailers, consumer goods companies, insurance firms, and others involved in seasonal crunch-time sectors face a delicate balance between opportunity and risk. Seasonal spikes can be a stringent test for executives, revealing the strength of their business and operational resilience. To understand why, just think back to recent incidents with organizations that may have experienced mass website outages due to holiday spikes or that suffered prolonged log-in issues.Indeed, downtime during peak periods can result in financial impacts measured in millions of dollars per hour, so its clear that the user experience is paramount. Even minor issues can lead to significant consequences, including customer churn, wasted ad spending, and long-term brand damage. The takeaway? Failure when the world is watching can have cascading effects, and a track-record of 99.99% uptime is insufficient if the 0.01% downtime occurs at critical moments. With that in mind, lets explore a strategic approach to building game-ready resilience.Game-ready resilience means that your systems can manage adversity -- from ecosystem impacts, including third-party services -- to unprecedented traffic peaks. Most importantly, it also means creating a culture of reliability with constant learning and cross-functional teams that understand the business impacts of downtime and can respond effectively to outages.Related:To enhance business and operational resilience during the holidays, tech leaders should focus on four key areas.1. Forecast and define measurable requirements.Start enhancing resilience by developing a reliable forecast of expected transaction volumes and user behavior. Seek to understand normal traffic patterns as well as how spikes in traffic might affect your systems during peak periods. Prioritize critical services; for example, with an e-commerce platform, the checkout process should take precedence over less-essential features like recommendation engines.Use service level objectives (SLOs) to define availability expectations and measure them. For instance, aim for 99.99% shopping-cart availability -- which you can foster by forecasting transaction volumes across all channels. Then, translate those forecasts into performance requirements like the ability to accommodate a specific number of concurrent users while meeting reliability expectations. It's also crucial to identify potential architectural bottlenecks and failure points.2. Map dependencies and mitigate risks.Related:Modern retail ecosystems are complex webs of internal systems and third-party services. To identify vulnerabilities and mitigate risk, create a comprehensive map of all dependencies. Then, assess the services scalability and reliability, and develop failure contingency plans that include circuit breakers and fallback options.In addition to infrastructure, focus on key business and foundational services, especially in hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Next, to build agility and minimize recovery time, develop a clear view of all dependency layers and build fault tolerance. An example of dependency management could look like an e-commerce organization simplifying its shipping infrastructure to achieve more efficient package delivery.3. Implement robust reliability checks.Establish clear, measurable reliability objectives aligned with business outcomes. For example, you might set granular targets, such as sub-2-millisecond log-in times. Such metrics create a common language across development, operations, and business teams, fostering a unified approach to reliability. Also, to ensure build stability, avoid last minute changes, and implement rigorous process controls for continuous validation.Related:Integrate SLOs and synthetic monitoring into your operational framework. Develop real-time observability solutions that provide actionable insights and rapid response capabilities. Implement observability to balance innovation and stability during peak loads and align technical metrics with indicators like net promoter scores. Also, adopt site reliability engineering to translate technical metrics directly into customer experience.4. Develop and refine incident-response procedures.Swift and effective responses to system challenges can prevent minor issues from becoming major crises. So, its essential to develop incident response procedures that include comprehensive system dependency maps that create communication channels, action plans, and escalation pathways that help minimize confusion. Automatic failure notifications are a must as well, as are self-healing approaches to incidents and solutions driven by error budgets and burn rates.Next, ensure organizational readiness through training, communication protocols, and regular response drills. Implement proactive monitoring systems to detect and address issues early. Also, learning from high-profile incidents underscores the importance of transparent, timely communication during disruptions.The Path ForwardBuilding resilience requires both a cultural and technical shift to align critical services with customer journeys, refine resilience policies, and adapt to changing demands. Practices like game day drills enhance readiness, reinforcing that resilience is an ongoing effort that requires continuous refinement, not a one-time project. True resilience requires a holistic approach that ensures people, processes, and technology work in sync to handle both surges and scale-downs effectively. By adopting the strategies weve discussed here, you can prepare your systems for peak times while building stronger, more resilient year-round operations.About the AuthorGanesh SeetharamanManaging Director, Deloitte ConsultingGanesh Seetharaman is a managing director at Deloitte Consulting LLP. He leads Deloittes Technology Resiliency market offering and is recognized for delivering innovative solutions for his clients, as well as for helping organizations navigate technology challenges and capitalize on market opportunities.See more from Ganesh SeetharamanNever Miss a Beat: Get a snapshot of the issues affecting the IT industry straight to your inbox.SIGN-UPYou May Also LikeWebinarsMore WebinarsReportsMore Reports