Sometimes I find myself rambling to a luckless friend about the Broken Windows Theory. Unfortunately for you, it's your turn now. It's this idea that fixing small things, like broken windows or graffiti in public spaces (the New York City subway, for instance), can prevent larger issues like crime. There’s something about clean spaces that sort of nudges people to treat them with a bit more respect.

The other day an unexpected flare of synaptogenesis made me think of this theory, applied to software products. You've been there - a weirdly placed button or an unintuitive popup, and somehow, the app feels... less. These small issues, compounded, somehow sour the experience and lower our perceived value of the product without us even realizing it.

I’ve got some stories from the trenches about this, too. In my Java days, I was hired by a company whose product was as slower than anything I do between waking up and my 3rd cup of coffee. Customers made a pun with the product name to celebrate its slowness. Tasked with solving the problem, instead of finding one big bottleneck, I discovered a myriad of small problems that, when fixed, gradually turned our slowpoke product into something that wasn't a basic human rights violation. Complaints went down, smiles went up.

Flash forward to a more recent gig: the product had been a ping pong ball between teams - one with a knack for overengineering and another that was quite the fan of sacrificing user experience for code simplicity. This had left it with a sort of Jekyll and Hyde personality: modules followed entirely different design systems, alerts popped like they wanted to give you a jump scare, and error handling was... it just wasn't. With carte blanche to make any improvements I thought necessary on top of the assigned work, after a few months of diligent boy scouting, it started looking and feeling more well-put-together.

I believe repairing these small broken windows is a bit of a subtle art. If you keep your windows intact and scrub off the graffiti, people start to respect the space more, even if they don't consciously notice the improvements. We shouldn’t shy away from sneaking in those little fixes when we can, even if it’s a small rebellion against the roadmap. Sometimes, your soul (and the product) just needs it. And if someone higher-up starts to get upset over the unscheduled betterment... it might be a sign that another adventure calls.