Speaker
Abstract
Small things going wrong can quickly snowball. The cascading failure is often a nightmare scenario for any system. An initial problem, which in isolation seems like such a minor problem, can kick off a chain reaction of ever-increasing failures, potentially leading to catastrophic results.
When a failure of a single component results in the failure of other connected elements, this is known as a progressive collapse. In this talk, Sam Newman looks at this phenomenon in more detail, and he'll examine how it has manifested in major disasters. Based on lessons learned from other industries, Sam will share three key techniques that can be used to mitigate against the progressive collapse occurring in your own system.
This talk will help you understand how to architect your systems in such a way that small failures stay small.
Interview
My session explores what happens when a small initial problem causes a giant catastrophe. In the context of buildings, this is called Progress Collapse. In my talk, I look at what happens when a building suffers a progressive collapse, how these can be mitigated, and what parallels we can draw deal with the cascading failures we see in distributed systems.
My session is about how disparate parts of a system interact, especially in the context of increasingly distributed systems. How we write code may have changed a lot over the last couple of years, but the fundamentals of system design, and the challenges of distributed systems still remain.
- When something goes wrong, they tend to look for one obvious cause, blame that and move on, without looking at wider systemic issues
- Too much focus on stopping things breaking, and not enough time spent on understanding how the system can continue to work when something does break
Stop looking for single causes of failure!
The curated tracks are what helps QCon stand apart. It means you get a lot less clash between tracks, but also it means that each individual track ends up having something for everyone.
Topics
QCon London 2026 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.
Part of the track
Architecting for Resilience Hosted by Jonathan Magen Computer Scientist, Distributed Systems Specialist, 20+ Years in Software DevelopmentFrom the same track
Wednesday 18 March
10:35 Whittle (3rd Fl.) Session resilience How to Find Resilience Bugs in Systems that Don't Exist Hillel Wayne Author of "Logic for Programmers" and "Learn TLA+" Building correct distributed systems takes thinking outside the box, and the fastest way to do that is to think inside a different box. One different box is "formal methods", the discipline of mathematically verifying software and systems. 11:45 Whittle (3rd Fl.) Session decentralized Spritely: Infrastructure for the Future of the Internet Christine Lemmer-Webber, David Thompson Let's take back the internet! Learn about Spritely's work to re-decentralize the net with new foundational technologies that put users in control. 13:35 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session architecture Understanding Progressive Collapse: How To Avoid A Cascading Failure Sam Newman Microservice, Cloud, CI/CD Expert, Author of "Building Microservices" and "Monolith to Microservices", 20+ Years Experience as a Developer Small things going wrong can quickly snowball. The cascading failure is often a nightmare scenario for any system. An initial problem, which in isolation seems like such a minor problem, can kick off a chain reaction of ever-increasing failures, potentially leading to catastrophic results. 14:45 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session Keeping the Nation On-Air: How We Think About Resilience at the BBC Tom Everest Head of Department for Architecture and Supply Chain @BBC At the heart of the BBC is delivering value to all, serving audiences across the UK and the world on TV, radio, and online with trusted and impartial news and high-quality British content. 15:55 Churchill (Ground Fl.) Session Shielding the Core: Architecting Resilience with Multi-Layer Defenses Anderson Parra Staff Software Engineer @SeatGeek High-demand events can cause sudden traffic spikes that overwhelm even well-designed systems. In ticketing platforms, millions of users — alongside increasingly sophisticated automated agents — may arrive simultaneously, placing extreme pressure on backend services.