System Design Workflows

System Design Workflows

Step-by-step workflows for common system design tasks.

Workflows Index

1. System Design Interview Approach
2. Capacity Planning Workflow
3. API Design Workflow
4. Database Schema Design
5. Scalability Assessment
6. Migration Planning

1. System Design Interview Approach

Use when designing a system from scratch or explaining architecture decisions.

Step 1: Clarify Requirements (3-5 minutes)

Functional requirements:

• What are the core features?
• Who are the users?
• What actions can users take?

Non-functional requirements:

• Expected scale (users, requests/sec, data size)
• Latency requirements
• Availability requirements (99.9%? 99.99%?)
• Consistency requirements (strong? eventual?)

Example questions to ask:

- How many users? Daily active users?
- Read/write ratio?
- Data retention period?
- Geographic distribution?
- Peak vs average load?

Step 2: Estimate Scale (2-3 minutes)

Calculate key metrics:

Users:        10M monthly active users
DAU:          1M daily active users
Requests:     100 req/user/day = 100M req/day
              = 1,200 req/sec (avg)
              = 3,600 req/sec (peak, 3x)

Storage:      1KB/request × 100M = 100GB/day
              = 36TB/year

Bandwidth:    100GB/day = 1.2 MB/sec (avg)

Step 3: Design High-Level Architecture (5-10 minutes)

Start with basic components:

┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐     ┌──────────┐
│  Client  │────▶│   API    │────▶│ Database │
└──────────┘     └──────────┘     └──────────┘

Add components as needed:

• Load balancer for traffic distribution
• Cache for read-heavy workloads
• CDN for static content
• Message queue for async processing
• Search index for complex queries

Step 4: Deep Dive into Components (10-15 minutes)

For each major component, discuss:

• Why this technology choice?
• How does it handle failures?
• How does it scale?
• What are the trade-offs?

Step 5: Address Bottlenecks (5 minutes)

Common bottlenecks:

• Database read/write capacity
• Network bandwidth
• Single points of failure
• Hot spots in data distribution

Solutions:

• Caching (Redis, Memcached)
• Database sharding
• Read replicas
• CDN for static content
• Async processing for non-critical paths

2. Capacity Planning Workflow

Use when estimating infrastructure requirements for a new system or feature.

Step 1: Gather Requirements

Step 2: Calculate Compute Requirements

Web/API servers:

Peak RPS:           3,600
Requests per server: 500 (conservative)
Servers needed:     3,600 / 500 = 8 servers

With redundancy (N+2): 10 servers

CPU estimation:

Per request: 50ms CPU time
Peak RPS:    3,600
CPU cores:   3,600 × 0.05 = 180 cores

With headroom (70% target utilization):
             180 / 0.7 = 257 cores
             = 32 servers × 8 cores

Step 3: Calculate Storage Requirements

Database storage:

Records per day:    100,000
Record size:        2KB
Daily growth:       200MB

With indexes (2x):  400MB/day
Retention (1 year): 146GB

With replication (3x): 438GB

File storage:

Files per day:      10,000
Average file size:  500KB
Daily growth:       5GB

Retention (1 year): 1.8TB

Step 4: Calculate Network Requirements

Bandwidth:

Response size:      10KB average
Peak RPS:           3,600
Outbound:           3,600 × 10KB = 36MB/s = 288 Mbps

With headroom (50%): 432 Mbps ≈ 500 Mbps connection

Step 5: Document and Review

Create capacity plan document:

• Current requirements
• Growth projections
• Infrastructure recommendations
• Cost estimates
• Review triggers (when to re-evaluate)

3. API Design Workflow

Use when designing new APIs or refactoring existing ones.

Step 1: Identify Resources

List the nouns in your domain:

E-commerce example:
- Users
- Products
- Orders
- Payments
- Reviews

Step 2: Define Operations

Map CRUD to HTTP methods:

Step 3: Design Request/Response Formats

Request example:

POST /api/v1/orders
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "customer_id": "cust-123",
  "items": [
    {"product_id": "prod-456", "quantity": 2}
  ],
  "shipping_address": {
    "street": "123 Main St",
    "city": "San Francisco",
    "state": "CA",
    "zip": "94102"
  }
}

Response example:

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "id": "ord-789",
  "status": "pending",
  "customer_id": "cust-123",
  "items": [...],
  "total": 99.99,
  "created_at": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z",
  "_links": {
    "self": "/api/v1/orders/ord-789",
    "customer": "/api/v1/customers/cust-123"
  }
}

Step 4: Handle Errors Consistently

Error response format:

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "error": {
    "code": "VALIDATION_ERROR",
    "message": "Invalid request parameters",
    "details": [
      {
        "field": "quantity",
        "message": "must be greater than 0"
      }
    ]
  },
  "request_id": "req-abc123"
}

Standard error codes:

Step 5: Document the API

Include:

• Authentication method
• Base URL and versioning
• Endpoints with examples
• Error codes and meanings
• Rate limits
• Pagination format

4. Database Schema Design Workflow

Use when designing a new database or major schema changes.

Step 1: Identify Entities

List the things you need to store:

E-commerce:
- User (id, email, name, created_at)
- Product (id, name, price, stock)
- Order (id, user_id, status, total)
- OrderItem (id, order_id, product_id, quantity, price)

Step 2: Define Relationships

Relationship types:

User ──1:N──▶ Order       (one user, many orders)
Order ──1:N──▶ OrderItem  (one order, many items)
Product ──1:N──▶ OrderItem (one product, many order items)

Step 3: Choose Primary Keys

Options:

Step 4: Add Indexes

Index selection rules:

-- Index columns used in WHERE clauses
CREATE INDEX idx_orders_user_id ON orders(user_id);

-- Index columns used in JOINs
CREATE INDEX idx_order_items_order_id ON order_items(order_id);

-- Index columns used in ORDER BY with WHERE
CREATE INDEX idx_orders_user_status ON orders(user_id, status);

-- Consider composite indexes for common queries
-- Query: SELECT * FROM orders WHERE user_id = ? AND status = 'active'
CREATE INDEX idx_orders_user_status ON orders(user_id, status);

Step 5: Plan for Scale

Partitioning strategies:

-- Partition by date (time-series data)
CREATE TABLE events (
  id BIGINT,
  created_at TIMESTAMP,
  data JSONB
) PARTITION BY RANGE (created_at);

-- Partition by hash (distribute evenly)
CREATE TABLE users (
  id BIGINT,
  email VARCHAR(255)
) PARTITION BY HASH (id);

Sharding considerations:

• Shard key selection (user_id, tenant_id, etc.)
• Cross-shard query limitations
• Rebalancing strategy

5. Scalability Assessment Workflow

Use when evaluating if current architecture can handle growth.

Step 1: Profile Current System

Metrics to collect:

Current load:
- Average requests/sec: ___
- Peak requests/sec: ___
- Average latency: ___ ms
- P99 latency: ___ ms
- Error rate: ___%

Resource utilization:
- CPU: ___%
- Memory: ___%
- Disk I/O: ___%
- Network: ___%

Step 2: Identify Bottlenecks

Check each layer:

Step 3: Load Test

Test scenarios:

1. Baseline: Current production load
2. 2x load: Expected growth in 6 months
3. 5x load: Stress test
4. Spike: Sudden 10x for 5 minutes

Tools:

• k6, Locust, JMeter for HTTP
• pgbench for PostgreSQL
• redis-benchmark for Redis

Step 4: Identify Scaling Strategy

Vertical scaling (scale up):

• Add more CPU, memory, disk
• Simpler but has limits
• Use when: Single server can handle more

Horizontal scaling (scale out):

• Add more servers
• Requires stateless design
• Use when: Need linear scaling

Step 5: Create Scaling Plan

Document:

Trigger: When average CPU > 70% for 15 minutes

Action:
1. Add 2 more web servers
2. Update load balancer
3. Verify health checks pass

Rollback:
1. Remove added servers
2. Update load balancer
3. Investigate issue

6. Migration Planning Workflow

Use when migrating to new infrastructure, database, or architecture.

Step 1: Assess Current State

Document:

• Current architecture diagram
• Data volumes
• Dependencies
• Integration points
• Performance baselines

Step 2: Define Target State

Document:

• New architecture diagram
• Technology changes
• Expected improvements
• Success criteria

Step 3: Plan Migration Strategy

Strategies:

Strangler fig pattern (recommended for large systems):

1. Add facade in front of old system
2. Route small percentage of traffic to new system
3. Gradually increase traffic to new system
4. Retire old system when 100% migrated

Step 4: Create Rollback Plan

For each step, define:

Step: Migrate user service to new database

Rollback trigger:
- Error rate > 1%
- Latency > 500ms P99
- Data inconsistency detected

Rollback steps:
1. Route traffic back to old database
2. Sync any new data back
3. Investigate root cause

Rollback time estimate: 15 minutes

Step 5: Execute with Checkpoints

Migration checklist:

□ Backup current system
□ Verify backup restoration works
□ Deploy new infrastructure
□ Run smoke tests on new system
□ Migrate small percentage (1%)
□ Monitor for 24 hours
□ Increase to 10%
□ Monitor for 24 hours
□ Increase to 50%
□ Monitor for 24 hours
□ Complete migration (100%)
□ Decommission old system
□ Document lessons learned

Quick Reference