High-traffic services must remain useful even when parts of the system fail or saturate. Graceful degradation prioritizes core user value while temporarily reducing nonessential features. Instead of aiming for perfect uptime, teams design fallback behaviors that protect experience during partial outages. This approach reduces the blast radius of incidents and buys time for recovery without compounding user frustration.
Feature Prioritization
Identify core paths that must remain available under stress. Secondary features can be disabled dynamically to preserve capacity. Clear priorities guide tradeoffs during incidents.
Fallback Strategies
Cached responses, read-only modes, and simplified views maintain continuity when dependencies fail. Timeouts and circuit breakers prevent cascading failures.
Testing and Readiness
Game days and chaos experiments validate fallback plans. Runbooks and drills prepare teams to execute calmly under pressure.
