Graham McNicoll

A bug in our codebase accidentally set our paywall to zero. As a side effect, revenue jumped 30%. Usually when you find a bug, you fix it and move on. Because we had the data, we were able to interrogate what was actually happening. That forced us to ask a question we had stopped asking: what is actually the right number here? It had been set once and never challenged again. Institutional knowledge. Not based on current data. Just accepted. Having this bug re-opened assumptions about right number for our paywall. We tested it again and found the right number. Revenue went up significantly. The bug found it. The data confirmed it. The real gain came from being willing to challenge an assumption the team had stopped questioning. Your product org has these too. The market shifts. The product changes. Users shift. What assumption in yours has stopped being a question?

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