Rebuilding versus refreshing: what to get right first

This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. If you only fix one thing about rebuilding versus refreshing this quarter, make it the first item below.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Start here

A rebuild is not always the answer. Getting it slightly wrong is survivable. Ignoring it entirely is not. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Then this

If the structure is sound, styling and content may be enough. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. If two people in the business would answer this differently, that gap is the actual problem.

Eventually

Rebuild when the platform blocks what you need to do. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It rarely shows up as a line item, which is exactly why it slips.

In practice

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
• A rebuild is not always the answer — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If any of that sounds like a description of your current setup, it is fixable.