Understanding the business before coding (and avoid slowing down your team)

Shipping fast and shipping often is important.
But it does not make sense if we don’t understand what we are building.

We can do a lot of things based on assumptions. But if the need is misunderstood, we can quickly go in the wrong direction and deliver features that bring no value… except wasting time.

When we build the wrong thing

On some projects, teams spend a lot of time building well-designed features. The problem is that the most important question is not always asked:

Are we solving the right problem?

Without a clear understanding of the business, we move forward blindly. We interpret needs, we assume use cases, and we make technical decisions without really measuring their impact.

And sometimes, we build something consistent… but useless.

The cost of misunderstanding

When a feature does not answer the right need, the problem does not stop after delivery.

It stays in the system. It has to be maintained, tested, and taken into account for future changes. It adds complexity.

And like any complexity, it slows down delivery.

This kind of problem is often invisible at the beginning. But over time, it weighs more and more on the team.

Going back to the problem before the solution

With experience, I learned to slow down before writing code.

Take time to understand the business.
Clarify the goals.
Identify areas of uncertainty.

This time is often seen as a slowdown. In reality, it helps avoid building something useless.

Aligning the team around the business

To better understand the need, I often use workshops like Event Storming.

It is a format that brings technical and non-technical people together around one goal: understanding how the business works.

With these workshops, we can model complex business workflows. They allow developers to ask questions directly to people who know the business.

Whether they are technical or not, everyone can share feedback. Step by step, people understand each other better and move in the same direction.

And most importantly, it creates a shared understanding.

Clarifying before building

Once the global vision is clear, we can go further with another workshop: Example Mapping. It helps share and refine the business understanding, this time at the level of a user story.

This workshop helps describe a feature through:

• concrete examples
• business rules
• edge cases

It helps align expectations between product and tech, and reduces ambiguity.

Developers as contributors, not just executors

When developers really understand the business, their role changes.

They are not only here to implement specifications anymore. They can propose solutions, challenge ideas, and anticipate problems.

And often, they help build simpler and more relevant solutions.

Understanding to deliver better

Understanding the business does not slow down delivery.
It is what allows you to accelerate it in a sustainable way.

Because you avoid building useless features, reduce back-and-forth, and make better decisions from the start.

Conclusion

Writing code is part of the job.
But it is not the hardest part.

The real challenge is to understand what we are building and why.

This is often what makes the difference between a team that produces code… and a team that is able to deliver value, consistently.