Don’t start from scratch

Website design principles port over to FileMaker development principles to a surprising degree.

Most FileMaker developers keep a set of templates available for getting basic projects started:  Contact, Businesses, Inventory, CRM, etc. This makes it easier and cheaper to provide a custom solution for a client.  Other items to keep available:  Custom functions, plugins, modular code, and some scripts are usually on the list.

Nathan Barry writes on the InVision blog about his theory for starting from scratch vs finishing a website that was only 80% complete.  He recommends making small changes and bringing the website to 100% complete (or at least close to 100%).

The perils of starting from scratch

That’s something I’ve heard a lot: if something isn’t good enough, it’s time to redo it. Sometimes that’s necessary, but more often you should use the foundation you already have to get closer to perfect.

James didn’t need a site redesign. He just needed to add the final level of polish to make his design truly stellar.

So that’s what we did. After dinner that night, James started making changes. I’d point out little things like: “Let’s find a new font for that title,” or “Let’s change the navigation color.” But for the most part, James spent the next 2 hours making small tweaks and asking the group, “What do you think?”

Instead of starting from scratch and having to spend days designing and building a new design, James took his site design from good enough to great!in mere hours.

In the FileMaker developer world, solutions can be given face lifts, but usually the client is more interested in process improvements and new functionality.  It’s rare to start over, mainly because a well designed database is easily expandable.

Source: Don’t start from scratch — Medium

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