If you remove it, would you miss it?

When we’re building software, we’re never sure about anything. We don’t know if thing that we’re working on is easy to understand. We don’t know if it has enough information. We don’t know if it’s in a right place. We don’t know if it’s even necessary.

When we can’t answer those things, one of the actions that people tend to take is to rely on status quo. What’s the default option? How others are solving this problem?

A better action that I found is to remove the feature completely and keep using the product. Soon enough you’ll either notice that something is missing, or you won’t feel a thing. One caveat though: it’s important for you to be your first customer—you can’t rely on hypothetical situations, because you’ll only get hypothetical answers.

If you realise that thing was necessary and you’re back to square one, at least there’s one less question to answer.

Rolandas Barysas
Hello, my name is Rolandas Barysas. I write software for a living, splitting my time between freelancing and personal projects.