A product story
From Frankenstein to Foundation: Refactoring a CMS for Scale
Stripping back siloed implementations into a shared, scalable CMS core.
Bug Tickets Per Week
01 / The problem
The situation
before the shift.
The business grows heavily through acquisition, requiring fast onboarding of new products onto the platform. However, the CMS had been built in silos — each app had its own implementation, creating inconsistent code, lack of testing, and a 'Frankenstein' effect across the platform. Regression bugs and merge errors were frequent, releases took almost a full day, and the support team was handling roughly 10 bug tickets per week.
02 / The hypothesis
Refactoring the CMS to establish a shared, reusable core would eliminate siloed implementations, reduce bugs and merge conflicts, accelerate releases, and position the platform to rapidly onboard acquisitions.
03 / The approach
- Core Refactoring: Led the refactoring of the CMS core to strip back siloed implementations.
- Shared Architecture: Established shared, reusable functionality that could serve all apps consistently.
- Component Alignment: Aligned components for consistency across the platform.
- Scalability Foundation: Built a foundation designed to scale quickly as new products were onboarded.
04 / Execution
- Systematically refactored siloed CMS implementations into a unified core.
- Established testing standards and reusable patterns across the platform.
- Reduced technical debt and improved code consistency.
- Positioned the platform architecture to support rapid acquisition onboarding.
05 / The result
10 → 1Bug Tickets Per Week
Regression bugs and merge errors drastically decreased. Release time dropped from almost a full day to roughly 1 hour. Support tickets fell from ~10 per week to 1–2. Critically, the platform was now positioned to onboard acquisitions quickly — directly supporting the business's growth strategy.
- Bug tickets reduced from ~10 per week to 1–2.
- Release time dropped from nearly a full day to ~1 hour.
- Regression bugs and merge errors drastically decreased.
- Platform positioned to rapidly onboard acquisitions, supporting growth strategy.