Incremental vs. disruptive development

Oliver Schönfeld Agile Hardware Development, Agile Management

Why Organizations End Up in Disruptive Development Cycles — The Real Causes

Despite the clear benefits of incremental approaches, many organizations end up planning large disruptive rewrites. The common causes are not strategic brilliance, but:

Premature release of a poor-quality product

When organizations push an MVP into production before it is structurally ready—missing features, poor architecture, minimal testing—technical debt accumulates rapidly.

The result:

  • maintenance becomes painful,

  • feature delivery slows down,

  • teams cannot evolve the system safely.

Eventually someone says, “We need to start over.”

Technical debt left unmanaged for years

Technical debt isn’t inherently bad—unmanaged debt is.
Teams that never invest in refactoring, architecture care, or component modularity create systems that are fragile and resistant to change.

As debt accumulates:

  • new features get harder,

  • defects become unpredictable,

  • integration breaks,

  • delivery time balloons.

At some point, disruption becomes the only way to move forward—but it was avoidable.

Lack of architecture discipline

Many disruptive initiatives originate from weak architectural foundations:

  • no boundaries,

  • inconsistent data models,

  • tight coupling,

  • shortcuts made under pressure.

Incremental design and refactoring would have prevented the collapse.

Organizational impatience and “just ship it” culture

Some organizations push for early releases to hit market windows.
This is often justified as “agile,” but in reality it is reckless when the product’s technical foundation is too weak.

These shortcuts accumulate interest—and the interest is paid in the form of disruptive rewrites.

The Hidden Costs and Risks of Disruptive Development

While disruptive development appears attractive (“we can finally fix everything”), it brings enormous risks:

  • Extremely high cost

  • Long development cycles with little visible progress

  • Uncertainty about how to replicate existing behavior

  • The old system evolves while the new one is built—doubling work

  • Data migration risks

  • High opportunity cost because teams stop improving the current product

  • Team burnout and loss of credibility

Disruptive development is not a strategic advantage.
It is a last resort when all incremental paths have been blocked—usually through earlier decisions.

When Disruptive Development Actually Makes Sense

Disruptive replacement is the right choice only in rare cases:

  1. The current architecture makes essential business goals impossible
    (e.g., performance ceilings, regulatory incompatibility).

  2. The system is fundamentally unchangeable due to extreme technical debt
    (the “every change breaks everything” situation).

  3. A radical new product direction is required that cannot fit into the old model.

  4. Technology shifts where incremental migration is infeasible
    (e.g., hardware platforms, obsolete frameworks with no upgrade path).

Even in those cases, the most successful approach is not a big-bang rewrite, but an incremental replacement strategy (strangler pattern, modular migration).

Organizational Dynamics: Why Incremental Is Hard—and Why Disruptive Seems Tempting

Internal teams prefer incremental

They understand the system, know how to evolve it, and appreciate stability.

External vendors often push for disruptive

They lack deep knowledge of the existing system and may prefer greenfield projects because they are easier to scope and sell.

The real challenge

Can one team maintain the old system and build the new one?
In most cases, a single team cannot.
A dual-team setup (Run + Build) is ideal only when disruptive work is unavoidable, not as a default.

If the organization is forced to split teams, it’s often a sign the technical debt already grew too large.

The Key Message: Disruptive Development Is Usually Preventable

Disruptive development should not be celebrated as innovation.
It should be recognized as a failure of earlier incremental practices:

  • failure to manage technical debt,

  • failure to maintain architectural integrity,

  • failure to invest in quality,

  • failure to respect long-term sustainability.

Had the organization developed incrementally—with better standards, testing, and discipline—the need for a disruptive rewrite likely would never have arisen.

How to Avoid Ever Needing a Disruptive Rewrite Again

1. Treat technical debt as a first-class citizen

Reserve capacity for refactoring and architecture improvement.
Measure debt and track it visibly.

2. Release incrementally—but not prematurely

“Minimal viable” must not mean “structurally weak.”
Do not ship architectures that cannot grow.

3. Maintain stable interfaces and modular design

This allows parts of the system to be replaced incrementally without disruption.

4. Invest in quality engineering practices

Automated tests, CI/CD, code reviews, realistic load testing—small investments that prevent huge rewrites.

5. Evaluate architecture continuously

Incremental evolution of architecture is the best way to avoid disruptive resets.

Conclusion

Incremental development is not just a safer path—it is a philosophy of sustainable evolution.
It encourages stable growth, continuous learning, and controlled risk.
Disruptive development, in contrast, is rarely a strategic choice; it is usually the result of earlier shortcuts and insufficient investment in quality.

The healthiest organizations are not the ones who rewrite their systems often.
They are the ones who design and evolve their systems so well that they never need to.

Title picture by pikisuperstar on Freepik.