Recapping the Incremental Approach: A Story About Urgency, Agility, and a Canadian Rock Classic

In case you missed it, Agility CMS CTO Joel Varty recently published The Incremental Approach: Go to Market in Less Than Half the Time. It’s a four-part series about how agile thinking, modern web technology, and having a superstar team of developers can overcome any digital emergency.

Here’s a summary of each part. If you’re reading this with headphones on, we highly recommend Working for the Weekend by Loverboy. It fits.

Part 1: When Everything Breaks

Everyone’s Watching to See What You Will Do

It’s Friday afternoon. The weekend is in sight. Suddenly, trouble. A client’s website crashes under the weight of a viral press release that was not scheduled to deploy. Despite scaling efforts, their infrastructure – built without a CDN – buckles.

A calm Friday afternoon turns into an endless barrage of 503 errors. Joel and his team scramble to respond as legacy architecture collides with 2025 traffic.

Read Part 1 Here

Part 2: Building a Fix on the Fly

Everyone’s Trying to Get It Right

There’s no time to waste. Joel and his team consider a quick CDN deployment. But DNS updates take time, and the clock is tick…tick…ticking away.

The solution isn’t quite clear, yet. What is clear is that fast, collaborative problem solving and flexibility are required to sort out this mess.

Read Part 2 Here

Part 3: One Step Forward, One Step Back

Everyone Wants You to Come Through

A temporary fix brings the homepage back. But that’s just a band-aid solution.

Joel and his team work to utilize a more modern, cache-ready Next.js solution, only to have the site crash again. The client’s unhappy. The team is stressed. And the best-laid plans get tested under real-world pressure.

Read Part 3 Here

Part 3: Edge Saves the Day

Everyone is Hopin’ It’ll All Work Out

Media attention is spiking. Palms are sweating. Time is running out. The client is apoplectic.

Joel and his team throw a hail Mary: edge computing at the CDN level to implement smart traffic routing. They deploy a partially modernized site that’s faster and more resilient.

Was it by the skin of their teeth? Yes. Is it a full rebuild or even a finished product? No. Does it work? Yeah, it works.

Read Part 4 Here

The Lesson: Sometimes You Can’t Wait for Perfect

The Incremental Approach is a must-read for developers, content teams, and digital leaders looking to solve issues smarter, pivot faster, and ultimately go to market without waiting for perfection.

Especially when there’s no time for it.