If you wouldn't pour the foundation after the roof, why do we keep building UIs before we know what data lives behind them? A case for designing the schema first — not because backend matters more, but because it's the part that can't be undone.
You can't shut the kitchen down for six weeks while you remodel — there are still customers eating. Here's how I replaced a legacy CRM piece-by-piece, kept the lights on, and slept at night.
Five patterns I keep reaching for when systems get real — circuit breakers, idempotency, retries, observability, and the discipline of measuring before you ship.