Review - Reimagine - Rebuild

The cycle of constantly refactoring things, to fuel the engines of continuous improvement, is one of my favourite aspects of engineering.

The idea is to build something, as quickly and pragmatically as possible, so it can be shipped out into the real world, to start attracting feedback.

The lessons, which this feedback produces, are like gold dust.

They are invaluable, when it comes to assessing what's working well, what's not working well and coming up with fresh ideas for improving things.

Eric Reis captured this idea very well, in his groundbreaking book The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses.

You can spend all the time in the world, making educated guesses on what you think your customers want and need.

Likewise, you can try to predict the endless ways, in which they will break or get confused by the user experience, which you create for them.

Bottom line though, the majority of the time, you will be wrong.

It's far to better to spin the wheel of innovation, as quickly and frequently as possible, in order to remove the guesswork and gather irrefutable data about what needs to be done, in order to constantly move things forward, in a positive direction.

Today, I am reviewing every aspect of the user journey, which a property developer navigates on Stacked, to add a new property, stack a deal and start a bridging loan application.

I have spent the past two hours engaged in this process and have already identified 20+ things, which are screaming out for improvement and simplification.

This is not something to be disheartened by!

Yes it can be sobering, to realise how many flaws there are in your product. But every single one of these flaws, represents an opportunity for innovation and improvement.

Stick at this process long enough and the war against luck, will start to turn decidedly, in your favour.

Never stop trying new things. Never stop innovating. Never stop improving.

And most importantly of all .... Never Ever Give Up!