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Check If You Are Working on an Outdated Idea
Product / Advice
The world moves. The problem you started on may no longer exist.
Why to Check
- Markets shift faster than roadmaps.
- Users change behaviours; workflows that were painful become easy.
- Adjacent tools solve what you set out to solve.
- A feature that made sense six months ago may be dead weight now.
How to Check
- Re-interview users. Is this still their top pain?
- Look at the competitive landscape. Who's shipped since you started?
- Ask: if we were starting today, would we build this?
- Honest retrospectives on killed work.
What to Do When the Answer Is No
- Kill it. Sunk cost is not a reason to continue.
- Redirect the team to a current problem.
- Document why — it protects future teams from repeating.
The Trap
Defending old ideas because you've invested in them. The investment is gone either way. The question is whether to keep investing.
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