Break the rebuild cycle
The problem with rebuilding while maintaining
Trying to run the current product and rebuild a new one in parallel? It sounds efficient, but often leads to delays, rework, and burnout. Here’s why unifying your efforts leads to better outcomes.
Key insights
Modernization shouldn’t mean duplication - splitting efforts across old and new platforms drains resources and momentum. Treating both as one evolving product aligns teams and drives meaningful progress.
Incremental change wins - replace what’s broken, extend what works. Steady progress beats big-bang rewrites.
Modernization is a capability, not a project - treat your digital experience as a living system that evolves with the business, not something to rebuild every few years.
1. When product teams "compete" with themselves
It usually starts with good intentions. The legacy digital application is causing user friction and holding the business back, so the decision is made to rebuild. But instead of unifying a path forward, efforts get split:
👉 One team enhances the current state experience to meet today's needs.
👉 Another team starts rebuilding a brand-new version from scratch.
It sounds like a smart way to keep things moving, but it creates confusion, duplicated effort, and long delays before users see any real value.
We often see this dual-track delivery.
It results in misaligned goals, rework, and two teams pulling in different directions.
There’s a better way: treat the platform as one evolving product. This approach which unifies teams, aligns priorities, and turns modernization into a compounding effort rather than a competing one.
2. The shift: from parallel tracks to one product journey
We’re not suggesting that legacy complexity disappears overnight; we’re suggesting that strategy and decision-making stay unified, even when teams execute separately, managed with a shared context, and one cross-functional team.
Traditional approach
- Separate roadmaps for legacy and new
- Different teams, different goals
- Duplication and rework
Single product mindset
- One shared roadmap
- One team, aligned on outcomes
- Streamlined, progressive delivery
3. What that looks like in practice
For example, instead of splitting focus between fixing the old and building the new, you might:
Redirect enhancement requests into strategic modernization:
Rather than patching the legacy app to relieve pain, use those requests as signals to prioritize which parts to modernize first - delivering immediate value while contributing to the long-term evolution.
Align teams around a shared roadmap:
Instead of splitting teams across “run” and “rebuild,” unify them under a single backlog that balances near-term fixes with forward-looking improvements - ensuring all effort moves the product forward.
Build new features directly into the evolving architecture:
Instead of bolting enhancements onto the legacy system, implement them in the modern foundation - helping teams learn, validate, and scale the future platform as part of day-to-day delivery.
4. Modernization as a capability, not a project
Many leaders still view modernization as a one-time initiative. A “clean slate” with a start and an end.
But modern digital platforms are never finished. They're living systems - constantly shaped by user behavior, market conditions, and business evolution.
If your plan is to rebuild and be "done," you'll be rebuilding again soon. Modernization should be a core capability - not a special project.
A product-led model also helps solve one of the toughest modernization challenges: stakeholder confidence. Instead of asking for all-in funding up front, it delivers value in visible increments - giving leaders tangible proof that investment is working, while creating flexibility to adjust as needed.
5. The power of the product mindset
A product mindset allows the same team to flex - growing temporarily for larger initiatives - while staying grounded in continuous delivery and shared goals.
This approach doesn’t eliminate risk - it manages it differently. Rather than treating future-state efforts as isolated experiments, it shares accountability across teams - enabling better fallback strategies and fewer surprises when things change.
- Delivers value faster through incremental wins
- Reduces risk and rework by removing duplication
- Improves adaptability when direction changes mid-flight
- Strengthens team alignment through shared ownership