Starting over but not from the start
It’s never really starting over because you’ve learned something from the last time
Last summer I built some racks to store my firewood.
The only place on my property that’s easily accessible and gets enough sun to dry wood properly was overgrown and uneven. I needed to do quite a bit of leveling for each rack before I could start stacking on it.
I’d start with one side and get that level left-to-right.
Then I’d go to the other side and try to get that level with the first side going front-to-back.
Then I’d need to level that side left-to-right.
One side would be fine, the other wouldn’t… so I’d raise the first to match the second…. but that wouldn’t be right so I’d raise the second side to match the first.
Once I’d gotten it level it was way too high up. If stacked with firewood it’d be too precarious.
I had kept iterating up — adding to make things better.
I needed to start over.
Armed with the knowledge from doing it the first time the second time was easier, faster and better than I could have ever made it without that experience.
Sometimes it feels like those of us building software are doing the same thing that I was doing with the wood racks.
We build. Learn. Add. Learn. Add something else.
Iteratively adding more features, and functions, and settings, and UI improvements to make the product better. And it works, but the products can get to the point that they become precarious and fragile.
We’ve learned what the product needs to be to become or remain successful, but we’ve improved it so much it could fall over at any minute. The foundation can’t support what we need to build anymore.
The “leveling up” is compounded too.
Technical decisions that were made before product market fit now hold us back. Design and user experience choices don’t make sense anymore as the use cases have grown. Even the way documentation is written and presented, or how we do onboarding, can be insufficient for the world we’ve built.
It’s worth a fresh look. Does what we have today, viewed with fresh eyes, work?
You might find that sometimes what’s needed is to pick an area and start again.