Before you invest in rebuilding versus refreshing

Teams tend to reach for this after something has already gone wrong. Before you spend anything on rebuilding versus refreshing, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• A rebuild is not always the answer
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

What to watch for

If the structure is sound, styling and content may be enough. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Rebuild when the platform blocks what you need to do. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

How to tell if yours is fine

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Three things worth confirming about rebuilding versus refreshing before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• If the structure is sound, styling and content may be enough — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.