This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the dumb-mistakes-and-gotchas category.
Last Updated: 2024-11-23
I started an unproven new tutors area of my business. Without talking to a single customer — or even having any tutor customers on the site — I asked my team to build massively complicated match-making systems, many, many filters (e.g. by "number of kilometers willing to travel" or "grades in a specific subject"), identity verification, etc.
This took much time and money and made the code difficult to maintain and understand. And it turned out that customers didn't want these non-core features. I wasted resources.
Build WAY less features. Focus on getting a brutally simple trial version out the door to test the waters at low cost and get feedback.
If in doubt, don't add the feature. There's enough to do with the basics and getting them right.