How to delete everything: The clean-slate approach to technical strategy

How to clear biases and build more resilient systems through clean-slate thinking, whether or not an actual system rewrite is on the table.

Have you ever stared, frustrated, at a complicated systems issue and thought to yourself – what if we just deleted it all and started over? Well… what if you did? The stigma around full system rewrites as being a paradise of engineering bike-shedding with little business value can make that feel like a Forbidden Thought™, but clean-slate thinking can be a practical tool in unsticking technical thinking around engineering challenges – even if you aren’t ready to kick off a refactor tomorrow. In this talk, you’ll see how approaching critical systems as expendable can expand solutions beyond our current system biases and introduce more system resiliency with real-world examples (including one where yes, we did delete everything). You’ll leave with some practical strategic thinking exercises to take back to your own team, as well as a little bit of code-clearing-catharsis.

Key takeaways

• “Rewrite” and “refactor” are words with a negative connotation implying a lot of time invested for little business value, but can sometimes actually be a much more efficient way to address a system issue.
• Our current system designs are often heavily rooted in previous technical or functional biases, and starting from the ground up can help remove those biases and open up new lines of thinking on approaches to deliver the same (or even better) outcomes.
• As much as engineers may be stereotyped as “always wanting to refactor everything”, it can in fact be challenging to break a team used to shipping as quickly as possible out of the “scrappy” mode of thinking.
• Even if there is not time or staffing to support a full rewrite of a larger system, taking a clean-slate approach to early system thinking can help you back into a more long-term-sustainable technical design.