Using Neo4j for the first time on something mission-critical

In a talk at GraphConnect, San Francisco, Stefan Armbruster (field engineer for Neo4j, Inc.) described this as one of the main ways new users can get into trouble. Starting with a mission-critical use case for your first Neo4j project will probably not end well. Developers new to Neo4j need to make sure that they have an appropriate level of experience with it before attempting to build something important and complicated and move it into production. The best idea is to start with something small and expand your Neo4j footprint over time.

One possible way to avoid this pitfall is to make sure that you have someone on your team with graph database experience. Failing to recruit someone with that experience and knowledge, avoiding training, and ignoring the graph learning curve are surefire ways to make sure you really mess up your project on the very first day.^[1] The bottom line is that there is no substitute for experience, if you want to get your graph database project done right.