# Session title

Refactoring an entire product from scratch: Stories from the product and design side

## Session URL

https://webexpo.net/prague2026/sessions/jan-toman-2026/

## Session Type

Conference Talk

## Talk Description

Most people would recommend refactoring a product gradually, piece by piece. At Supernova.io, we rewrote everything at once. It was risky, messy, and yes: we’d do it again. Two years later, here’s what we’ve learned.



This is not an engineering war story. This talk covers the rewrite from the product and design side: migrating our entire application from Flutter to React while serving large enterprise customers used to a biweekly cadence of new features. And operating on a limited runway of a seed-stage startup.



Whether you’re facing a rewrite of your own or just want to understand what it takes, here’s what I’ll cover:




The feature-by-feature migration audit where we decided what to keep, rethink, or cut



How we kept the old product alive while building the new one, and the tradeoffs that came with it



The “no new features” rule we set and then broke anyway



Choosing a third-party component library for our design system — what it gave us, what it cost us, and would we do it again?



What to do when you have almost no product analytics available, and what our customers thought about us removing features



How we failed at early access




I’ll close with a candid two-year retrospective on what held up, what we’re still paying for, and the decision frameworks that kept us moving.





## Tags

Business & Growth, Design Systems, Design Thinking & UX, Frontend Dev

## Session Focused on

Web Development: 40%, Design & UX: 100%, Marketing: 0%, Business: 100%

## Session Presenter

Jan Toman

## Session Presenter Bio

Jan leads Product and Design at Supernova.io, a platform that helps product teams prototype, document, and ship faster. Before Supernova, he established and led design systems teams at Kiwi.com and Productboard, and has provided design systems consulting to numerous companies. Jan started his career as a frontend developer, moved through UX design, and eventually found his home in product management — carrying with him a perspective that spans engineering, design, and product strategy.

## Session Details

### Date

May 28, 2026 4:00 pm

### Duration

40 Minutes

### Specific Location

Lucerna Cinema

### General Localtion

Lucerna Palace, Prague, Czech Republic