# Limiting Failure Opportunities in Software Systems

DevFeed: [Limiting Failure Opportunities in Software Systems](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/bad-luck-tickets-32240.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://publicobject.com/2024/11/13/bad-luck-tickets/>)

Author: Jesse Wilson

Published: 2024-11-13T05:08:26Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Public Object](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/public-object.md>)

Topics: [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [Back end](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/backend.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [Latency](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/latency.md>), [xz](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/xz.md>)

Tags: [backend](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/backend.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [latency](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/latency.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/systems.md>), [xz](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/xz.md>)

## AI overview

This commentary introduces "bad luck tickets," a way to think about the number of opportunities for failure in a system. It applies the idea to team availability, information sharing, open-source dependencies, supply-chain risk, and fan-out database queries, including how parallel queries inherit the maximum latency of their individual shard queries.

## Source excerpt

My son's swim meet is coming up. If he's healthy, he'll compete. My daughter's hockey team has a game coming up. League rules say they must forfeit if they have fewer than 10 players. There's only 10 girls on the roster so they need everyone