“You cannot build a tower, building one floor at a time.”

I was talking about real towers and not those in the game of blocks. During my mentoring session with an upcoming CEO, we were discussing about a product that has a huge scaling potential.

“Building a tower requires a solid foundation, strong infrastructure, various support systems, and many other factors, including those which are outside of your control.”

It sounds very logical when someone says I plan to build this enterprise product taking small steps one at a time. However, once a product is built for a specific scale, it is very difficult to scale it beyond a certain point. Sometimes that involves rewriting certain critical pieces, however many times it becomes complete redevelopment.

At the same time, it is not possible to build the entire product in one go. No doubt it requires many small steps. However, depending on how far one wants to go, the steps have to be planned properly. That means the entire blueprint must be ready before we can start building the foundation.

Have you come across this situation?