Serverless: From Bad Practices to Good Solutions

Serverless computing is increasing its popularity in the industry. However, practitioners still have issues when using it, also because serverless bad practices, bad smells, and anti-patterns have not been deeply investigated. In this work, we identify the main bad practices experienced by practitioners during the development of serverless-based applications. We interviewed 91 experienced practitioners and we performed a focus group to analyze the solutions they adopted to solve the issues generated by the bad practice. Moreover, we propose the most appropriate solutions based on our professional experience. The results can be helpful to other practitioners to avoid facing the same issues, to understand how to overcome them, and to researchers that can better validate them and propose alternative solutions.