How throwing away a million lines of code helps

In this episode of Datadrivet, Joni talks with Robert Ingemarsson, Chief Product and Tech Officer at TimeWave AB. TimeWave builds technical solutions for cleaning companies and other service businesses. Robert makes the case for removing features that users do not use. Cutting them lowers costs and lifts profitability.

The team stripped features off the login homepage of their SaaS product. Robert braced for customer service complaints. None came. That silence gave the team confidence to keep going. They removed 30 items, then another 30, with no fallout.

The episode digs into why deletion is hard. Loss aversion means people feel a potential loss more sharply than an equivalent gain. So removing anything feels worse than it should. The sunk cost fallacy means teams keep investing in something because time and money already went into it, even as the returns shrink.

Robert draws on his time at Avanza and TimeWave. He explains how he persuaded teams to cut code.

The takeaway, in his words: listen, get inspired, and throw away your code.

Listen to the full episode of Datadrivet.