Handling Duplicate Work Discovered Halfway Through a Project

You are halfway through a project when you discover that another team has already built the same thing. What do you do? This was one of the behavioral questions in a coding-and-behavioral round, and the hardest of them. ```hint Check before you change course Think about what you would need to confirm about the other team's work before making any decision, and what you would compare it against. ``` ```hint Who else is affected Consider who besides you has a stake in the outcome, such as your manager, your stakeholders, your own team and the other team, and when each of them should hear about it. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the other team's version already launched and supported, or still in development? - Am I leading the project or contributing to it, and who decided that it should be built? - Does the other team's version meet the same requirements, or does it only look similar? - Should I answer with a real experience, or describe what I would do? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - Checking how far the two efforts really overlap, against the project's actual requirements, before reacting - Telling the manager and stakeholders early, and approaching the other team as collaborators rather than competitors - An explicit way to decide between adopting the other team's work, contributing to it, merging the efforts or continuing, without sunk-cost reasoning - Looking after the team's morale and reusing what it already built - A change that would surface this kind of overlap earlier next time ### Follow-up Questions - The other team's version covers most, but not all, of your requirements. What do you do? - Your manager wants to continue anyway because your project is already on a committed roadmap. How do you respond? - How could the overlap have been found before you started? - You believe your design is better than the other team's. How do you make sure that is not just a preference for your own work?