FAQ

What Does 76 Days of Zero-Maintenance Production Stability Mean for Software Quality?

Multi-Vertical Scaling

Key Takeaways
  • According to Google's 2024 State of DevOps Report (DORA metrics), even elite-performing engineering teams measure stability in terms of mean time to recovery -- how fast they can fix things when they break.
  • PRJ-05 is a South African insurance lead-generation platform covering 9 insurance product verticals with multi-step quote funnels, API lead routing, an organic content hub of 10 SEO articles, and a CI/CD deployment pipeline.
  • For someone running a business on software infrastructure, 76 days of zero maintenance translates directly into operational cost savings and attention freed for other priorities.

It means the software ran in production for 76 consecutive days -- processing real traffic, serving real users -- without a single code change, bug fix, or manual intervention. At Stealth Labz, the PRJ-05 insurance quoting platform operated unattended from October 9 through December 22, with zero commits to the codebase during that entire window. No patches, no hotfixes, no emergency deployments. The platform just ran.

Why this number matters in context

According to Google's 2024 State of DevOps Report (DORA metrics), even elite-performing engineering teams measure stability in terms of mean time to recovery -- how fast they can fix things when they break. The industry assumes production software will break. Change failure rates among high-performing teams still average 5% to 15%, meaning 1 in 7 to 1 in 20 deployments causes a production incident requiring intervention.

The standard for "stable" in the industry is not "zero maintenance." It is "fast recovery." A 76-day stretch with zero required changes is not just stable by industry standards -- it falls outside the normal measurement framework entirely. Most uptime metrics track hours or days between incidents. Seventy-six consecutive days of genuinely unattended operation is a different category.

What produced this result

PRJ-05 is a South African insurance lead-generation platform covering 9 insurance product verticals with multi-step quote funnels, API lead routing, an organic content hub of 10 SEO articles, and a CI/CD deployment pipeline. The platform was built in 20 active development days across 97 total commits.

The code quality metrics that underpin the 76-day stability window:

Metric Value
Total lines of code 16,993
Net-new delivery commits 71 (73.2%)
Rework commits 26 (26.8%)
Reverts 2
Production stability gap 76 days with zero code changes

A 26.8% rework rate during the build phase is what created the conditions for zero rework during the stability phase. The team (80.4% operator, 19.6% CON-01) invested in getting the code right during development. That upfront rigor paid off as months of unattended operation.

What this means for a business operator

For someone running a business on software infrastructure, 76 days of zero maintenance translates directly into operational cost savings and attention freed for other priorities. Every hour not spent debugging, patching, or recovering from production incidents is an hour available for business development, customer acquisition, or launching the next vertical.

It also means the platform is provably sellable. A buyer evaluating software infrastructure asks one question above all others: "Will this break after I buy it?" Seventy-six days of documented, git-verified unattended operation is the strongest possible answer. The code does not just work in a demo environment -- it works in production, by itself, for months.


Related: How many business verticals can one software platform support?

References

  1. Google Cloud (2024). "State of DevOps Report -- DORA Metrics." Industry benchmarks for deployment frequency and change failure rates.
  2. Keating, M.G. (2026). "The Compounding Execution Method: Complete Technical Documentation." Stealth Labz. Browse papers