Entrepreneurship | 2 Min Read
#69 - The Fastest Way to Kill a Project
The pursuit of perfection is one of the fastest ways to kill a project... This last couple of weeks, I've been working like crazy to complete some database optimizations on Harken.
Hey Friends 👋
The pursuit of perfection is one of the fastest ways to kill a project...
This last couple of weeks, I've been working like crazy to complete some database optimizations on Harken. You see at first, before the launch, I thought the data-fetching solution and database design were great but this was just in a testing environment with me using it. As soon as I pushed it to prod and got some users on the product, the issues very quickly presented themselves and highlighted just how inadequate the solution I had implemented was.
Now, today, after 2 weeks, a full database migration, and a complete backend design shift, there is a more stable backend in place to handle the increased requests and users with no timeouts or API limiting. In short, a much better solution that is leagues ahead of the previous solution that was in place.
The key thing this whole experience has taught me is you can't predict the future, no matter how hard you try. Before the launch of Harken, I was very close to completely redesigning the backend for an entirely different reason that would've pushed the release of it back weeks if not months. And, then, this issue would've still reared its ugly head after the release so more work would be required!
So, I guess the motto of this story and my recent experiences is don't let chasing perfection kill your projects. Don't chase the perfect solution to a problem because truth be told you don't know if it'll be a problem when real users use it. Instead, let users get their hands on your product and let the issues and problems show their faces. Then you know what needs to be fixed and improved so you can focus like a surgeon with a scalpel and fix them!
I hope you have a great week next week, I'd love to hear what you're working on so make sure to hit reply and share what your goals are for the week. 📩
And, as always, thank you for reading.
Coner x
New Content 💻
It's been a few months but today I just published a new blog post covering how to build a contact form powered by AWS in Next.js. Check it out at the link below.
https://conermurphy.com/blog/how-to-build-a-contact-form-with-nextjs-and-aws
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