Re:Ask HN: Integrate Software Solution with Competitor's?
by Closi on Tuesday November 30, 2021 @05:16PM
(#29398192)
Don't assume that they will ever be a single product - but do assume that they will move closer together.
Work out what that first task is - often the best place to start is the UX rather than the back end (as the UX may be easier to merge onto a single platform/codebase), and then you can have the two products having a similar 'look and feel'.
Then you can start looking at other bits to merge - for instance can you use the same database engine, languages, coding styles?
But the most important bit - don't go rewriting it all Big Bang otherwise you will just get yourself in a rut.
The part that will be the most difficult to change is the business logic - if the two products fundamentally have different processes it is very difficult to merge them together (from a customer perspective). A decision early on is required to know if they will fundamentally be two separate products, or if they will kill one and it will become one product, but you can't have one product with two different ways of doing the same thing for every feature.
Work out what that first task is - often the best place to start is the UX rather than the back end (as the UX may be easier to merge onto a single platform/codebase), and then you can have the two products having a similar 'look and feel'.
Then you can start looking at other bits to merge - for instance can you use the same database engine, languages, coding styles?
But the most important bit - don't go rewriting it all Big Bang otherwise you will just get yourself in a rut.
The part that will be the most difficult to change is the business logic - if the two products fundamentally have different processes it is very difficult to merge them together (from a customer perspective). A decision early on is required to know if they will fundamentally be two separate products, or if they will kill one and it will become one product, but you can't have one product with two different ways of doing the same thing for every feature.