How Can We Make Website Maintenance Work More Visible?

Published on Apr 24, 2019 (updated May 29, 2021), filed under development, maintainability. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

This is one of 180 articles that you can also read in an ebook: On Web Development II.

The maintenance and maintainability of websites is a much neglected topic. That’s an observation that has prompted me to compile yet two maintainability guides, guides that are surely not all we can document about the subject. It’s a problematic observation, too, because: We cannot not maintain.

Why is maintenance, why is maintainability so neglected?

Given said “law,” that one cannot not maintain, maintenance will not actually be neglected—our efforts and learnings here may just not be visible, and therefore not get documented well.

To turn things around, therefore, the question may be: How can we make website maintenance work more visible, and with our observations improve maintainability?

And some possible answers pop into our minds: Document the tasks we perform, document major issues and decisions, document the time we invest in maintenance.

Especially in high-performance environments, this is neither convenient nor easy to do, and therefore not tempting to even start doing. Which may explain a good part of the visibility problem.

Yet—increasing visibility is what may need to be done if we ever want to draw impactful lessons from our combined maintenance efforts. Therefore, to leave no stone unturned, for everyone:

What can we do to make website maintenance work more visible?

Perhaps we can gather lessons and ideas through something like #webmaintenance.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Interpret charitably but be critical—and share feedback and advice that makes my work better.)