Project Retrospectives · Published July 9, 2026
Retrospective: The Cascade Behind One Change
Splitting 'customer' into enterprise and individual looked like one field. It touched six modules.
In week seven the client asked for this change. We estimated three days; it affected six modules and took two extra weeks. We had assessed development but not data and process.
Cascading impacts we missed
Historical data migration, with three thousand of twenty thousand records impossible to classify automatically.
Approval routing by customer type, which required adjusting three existing flows.
Every report and export template changed, and the client had already submitted those templates upward.
Our checklist now
Every change is assessed across five dimensions: development, data migration, process impact, reporting impact and training.
The assessment goes into the change request with schedule and cost, signed before work starts.
Any change touching historical data structure is estimated on the worst case.
Change is not the problem; underestimating it is. Counting the cascade also helps clients understand why time is needed.
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