Make a maintainable system following the basic best practices and principles like SOLID, SoC, DRY, KISS etc. Make sure that the unit tests are written properly. Set proper milestones such that we can have regular roll outs every sprint.

Balancing immediate project outcomes with long-term system sustainability is crucial. One strategy I use is setting incremental goals—each short-term milestone feeds into a larger vision, ensuring today's work lays the foundation for tomorrow’s needs. I also schedule regular architecture reviews to assess whether the current system can adapt to future demands, ensuring we’re aligned with both market trends and technology advancements. Investing in team development is key too—upskilling the team not only enhances current project efficiency but also equips us to handle future challenges with agility. Keeping one eye on the future ensures that today's solutions don’t become tomorrow's technical debt.

Starting with a business aligned town plan architecture which is realised using modular, decoupled and composable services enhances a system's longevity. These services should be horizontally and vertically decoupled, allowing for evolution of both the domain services and underlying technology independently. Such a system can be realised incrementally with prioritisation based on immediate project outcomes. Quite often teams incur tech debt to achieve immediate project outcomes. It is important that this tech debt is recorded and appropriately prioritised for remediation. Not remediating tech debt, especially tech debt that poses risk and is malignant, progressively reduces the longevity of the system.

1. Simple things last long. UDP (User Datagram Protocol), REST APIs are excellent examples. 2. Longevity comes by simplifying user experience, architecture, approach, APIs, design, programs, configurations, procedures and so on. 3. The above, in turn, come from revisiting, refactoring, redoing, replacing, letting go of stuff that we learnt with so much effort but is a source of complexity in the current context, wisdom, courage and the energy to do. 4. It is also true that complexity eventually results in burn out.