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Issue 044Field NoteGovernanceRef 154

The risk of rebuilding around edge cases

Prioritising edge cases in commerce development can lead to disproportionate resource allocation, technical debt, and project delays. An evidence-based approach is crucial, focusing on actual business value and user impact to mitigate these risks.

Tom Williams· Head of Development
5 min readReviewed February 2026
"Rebuilding around edge cases often prioritises infrequent exceptions over core value, leading to inflated costs, extended timelines, and technical debt."
Written by
Tom Williams, Head of Development at iWeb
Tom Williams
Head of Development
10 years at iWeb

Tom heads the development team at iWeb and leads the data practice across PIM, search relevance, product data and operational commerce systems. He writes about migration economics, punchout, catalogue structure, order-management complexity, and the product-data decisions that quietly shape platform performance long before launch. Particularly focused on B2B operational reality and AI-ready commerce data.

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