Do it properly, do it once

Published on Monday, July 21st 2025 by Aaron Whiffin

My dad always used to say to me "Aaron, do it properly, do it once", and contrary to what a ‘wise’ teenage Aaron thought, he was correct.

He was, in fact, referring to fixing my car, and not trying to cut corners to make the job quicker. This lesson hit home one day when I left a difficult bolt out when changing a clutch in an Austin Metro, and having to do the whole job again.

Now I am myself a father, and (apparently) a grown up, I find myself offering the same advice; but surprisingly not just to my son and daughter, but also to clients in the web-world, especially in web development.

A few examples instantly spring to mind.

"I’ve diagnosed the issue to save time"

Here’s a fun one, the client told us what their issue is, how crucial it is that it is fixed immediately, and what we need to fix in order to rectify the problem.

Seem fair? Well, the issue is that we didn’t think that the underlying issue was what they told us to fix. Add to this that a couple of web agencies, and a family member have tried, and their suggested fix still isn’t working. They had spent hours on this and keep hitting brick walls.

We told them that we would need to take a step back, diagnose the core problem, and fix that. It took some convincing because they didn’t want to pay us to diagnose something when they knew the cause, but they reluctantly agreed.

Just half an hour of billable time later, it was fixed… and wasn’t what they told us it was!

Every man and his dog

Similarly, we have seen another client run in to issues, and have had every man and his dog try and fix them. These range from family members, friends of family members, several web and marketing agencies, and apparently anyone else who could type, but we’re unsure in what order, or who changed what.

The issue is that due to the lack of experience of the first ‘developer’ they ‘fixed’ the wrong thing so along came the second person who had a slightly harder job to do, and they also did it wrong.

This repeated this several times over six months, with every person or agency compounding on the mistakes of the last, then it still didn’t work. This was costing them thousands of pounds in sales. So, they gave us a call, again telling us what they thought the issue was, even though it was very obviously wasn’t that. We took a step back, assessed what had been done, and did it properly.

It was an almighty mess that started because the client tried to get a low-cost fix, and this meant that a simple task ended up taking us over ten hours to undo what everyone else had done, then under an hour to do the original task.

The client as the middleman

We have another client who, in order to try and save money, always acts as the middleman.

It’s ironic because the few hours that she’ll save through admin, she’ll end up spending multiple times due to her lack of understanding around the subject.

In one example we are performing a technical integration and were instructed not to communicate with the agency the other end, and not to read any documentation ourselves. She could do this and tell us what to code...

Guess what? It wasn’t correct, so we are coding it for the third time... and still aren’t allowed to talk to the other agency directly.

"I’ve been hacked but don’t want to pay to fix it"

If there is one thing that you need to do properly, it’s to secure a system after it has been compromised.

We used to have a client, with a large custom-built PHP platform. We inherited this code and when we onboarded the client suggested a few upgrades that were needed in order to make the website secure. The client refused in order to save a day or two.

A couple of years later it was hacked; we fixed the immediate problem taking around five days, and suggested another couple of days to secure other vulnerabilities. The client refused again.

A year later, they were hacked again via one of the unpatched vulnerabilities that we warned them about, but this time have gained full access to everything. We offered a full fix, this time we’re looking at around ten days, the client refused and asked us just to hide the effects of the hack, essentially leaving the hackers in there.

Several months later, because they still have full access, the site was defaced again. The issue is that as this has been left so long, and all of the clean backups have expired, this project would now be weeks of work to secure, and a complete server migration. It’s a huge job that the client can’t afford.

They now have several hackers permanently in their system, all with full access to their code and data. This all started because they didn’t want us to do the job properly from the outset so that they could save a day or two of time.

Worse of all, overall, it has cost them a lot more than a proper fix would have done.

It’s not all bad

We have recently gained a new client with very complicated web-based software used to run their business; software that every other developer has shied away from.

The client was happy for us to take a step back, audit the code, and get the basics in place such as backups and a local development environment.

The client then asked us for changes, but wanted to chat with us first to ensure that they are pursuing the correct path, and wanted to do it properly and to our guidance.

Wonderful, absolutely wonderful!

Doing it properly is likely going to lead to a far better system and be more efficient in the long term.

A word of advice

There are a lot of competent and decent web agencies out there, all doing what they can to help. A lot of them are well-trained and qualified in what they do.

We’d suggest listening to their advice and, given the option, aim to get things done properly, first time. As my dad said “do it properly and do it once”.