[lostgame]

A really important addition to this would be: it has to have been from the start.

The issue is that so many projects have not been designed with these ideas from the outset, that it indeed usually does take a mammoth amount of re-engineering and dev time to make these kinds of changes and optimizations after the fact.

[yellowapple]

Which is exactly why I cringe - often visibly - at any suggestion that a duct-tape-and-bubble-gum "MVP" is in any way/shape/form acceptable. That "prototype" will end up being the final product because dev teams have a tendency to accumulate technical debt like gangbusters.

To continue with the mediocre carpentry analogies floating around: a (competent) carpenter doesn't build a sturdy table by first building a shitty table and reinforcing it later.