People usually see the 1% that ships: the feature in production, the screen that looks calm. The other 99% (discarded flows, dead ends, prototypes that never left the drawer) stays put.

Why the drawer isn't failure

In work around social security and talent ops, most ideas die for good reasons: an entity changed a portal, a path was unstable, a happy path ignored how operators actually work. Shelving those paths is how you avoid shipping theater.

What I keep from the drawer

Every shelved approach teaches a constraint. Sometimes it comes back years later when the rules or the market shift. ECORPA didn't appear fully formed; it grew out of years of trying to fix the same class of problems in smaller ways.

Final thought

If you only optimize for the polished 1%, you forget how products are actually made. Open the drawer when you're stuck. The useful answer is often an idea you already paid for once.