The Development Speed Trap: How Rapid Cycles Can Undermine Engineering Excellence

The software development sector has developed a mania of one movement: go faster. The engineering teams are under constant pressure to produce more features, release faster and sustain an ever accelerating speed of development. This addiction to speed has become so embedded into our culture that it is seldom regarded as being problematic. However, what is the opposite of this obsession with speed? What is happening when the unstopping drive to create and release products faster is secretly compromising the same productivity it is purportedly improving? The fact is less black and white than the faster-better story makes it out. Though quick development may show quick results, it may be covering some bigger problems that are going to accumulate later. This puts us in a scenario we could refer to as the development speed trap in which the aim of speed is counterproductive and results in technical debt, quality concerns, and eventual decreased progress.

Fast development cycles have undisputed short term advantages. The ability to respond promptly to the needs of the market and the feedback of customers gives a feeling of flow and development. Regular releases are perceived by stakeholders as indicators of an efficient engineering organization, and developers feel that they have achieved something when they are able to deliver features in a short period of time. This is a speed motivated strategy that can offer valid competitive benefits. Organizations that repeat themselves easily tend to be ahead of others who are stuck in the long development process. Their capacity to quickly test concepts, get user feedback and pivot when required is priceless in the current dynamic world market. However, the measures that are taken to determine this success are false. Fast track does not necessarily mean a productive or a successful long term future course. Indeed, once speed is the priority, the compromises that the team will undertake are usually minor but can build up to become very serious issues in the long run.

When development teams are working under time pressure the problematic patterns become apparent that are not visible at a glance but have long-term effects.

Narrow Focus and Systemic Blind Spots

Time-pressured developers are invariably the victims of tunnel vision, which is their obsessive concentration on current work without seeing the big picture of the larger system. That is not a lapse of engineering ability, it is an expected reaction to unrealistic contrivance of time. Lack of time to think of how their code would fit in the systems thus end up missing vital interdependencies. What works so well by itself can have unforeseen interactions with other parts and cause bugs that can only be discovered weeks or months later. These neglects add up to the phenomenon known by systems theorists as technical entropy - a slow loss of system coherence that makes the development of the system more challenging and prone to error.

Problems with Quality Degradation and User Experience

Not enough testing and quality assurance is often caused by the need to release products as quickly as possible. Features are made available to users prior to their readiness, which causes frustrating experiences that harm brand reputation and trust. Compared to technical problems inside a company, business problems that a user can see can have a direct affect on the business. Whenever customers experience buggy functionalities or lack of full functionality they develop reluctance towards adopting subsequent changes. The engineering groups will have to switch to the firefighting mode (debugging, patching, and emergency fixes) when quality concerns arise after the implementation. Such a reaction cycle takes out resources that would be spent on strategic development and puts more strain on already time-constrained teams.

The Compound Interest of Technical Debt

Each shortcut that is made in the name of speed contributes to the technical debt of the codebase. Similar to financial debt, technical debt is cumulative in that the more the debt a project has, the more costly and challenging it will be to develop in the future. At first, fast solutions and workarounds may appear to be innocent, merely a short-term solution to an imminent deadline. However, every compromise is a complexity to the system that increases the difficulty in understanding it, editing it, and maintaining it. The debt built up may eventually become so onerous that refactoring of major parts is required or even a total rewrite. The most pernicious element about technical debt is its timely effect. The teams can have a high velocity over months and silently generate a debt that will make them eventually slug out to an extreme degree.

The answer is not to go slow, but to aim at sustainable velocity - the speed at which the teams can operate without damaging quality or exhausting themselves.

Balance Fast Pacing and Slow Moments

Effective teams know when to pick up speed and when to slow down. They create buffer time in their schedules of refactoring, testing and architectural enhancement. This may appear to delay short-term progress but this helps to avoid the technical debt buildup which ultimately results in much more severe slowdowns.

Harness Automation for Cognitive Efficiency

Time savings are not the main benefit of automation - cognitive offloading is. By automating the rote activities in teams, such as testing, deployment, and monitoring, teams create more mental space to solve their problems and work on more creative things. This mental acuity enables a team to work fast on substantial work and at the same time to make sure that the quality checks are carried out with regularity and consistency.

Proactive Technical Debt Management

Successful teams do not view technical debt as a crisis that has to be resolved when it turns critical but instead, view it as a part of their daily business. They set aside a percentage in every development cycle to reductions of debt, and as a necessary maintenance, but not optional work.

Cultivate Team Sustainability

Sustainable velocity is one that needs sustainable teams. This entails safeguarding of the well-being of the developers, time to learn and develop, and a pace that does not cause burnout. Teams that prefer to be sustainable do not merely sustain their pace longer, they usually perform at a higher peak due to the fact that they work with a state of stability instead of stress.

Use Holistic Success Metrics

It is more effective to go beyond velocity measurements to also measure quality and maintainability and provider-satisfaction measures to get a more comprehensive view of team health and long-term productivity. Among the key metrics, one may note:

• Defect rate and rate of severity
• Time spent on maintenance vs. new features
• Development satisfaction and retention
• System performance and reliability
• Customer satisfaction on released functions

Track quality, sustainability, and value creation and not delivery speed.

Building successful organizations around software think more like marathon runners than sprinters. They know that long-term gradual improvement is much better than a short-term burst at an unsustainable pace. It does not imply slowness or the possibility of giving up urgency in situations where it is really necessary. Rather, it entails being tactical on the timing to work hard and when to invest in long term capabilities. Real engineering productivity is the construction of systems and practices that help teams to sustain high performance over long-term durations. This involves striking a balance between short-term delivery requirements and investments in code quality, team health and system architecture. The companies that survive in the long run are those ones who did not succumb to the urge of compromising on the ability of the future in favor of the deadlines of the present. They know sustainable velocity and not maximum velocity are the determinants of sustainable competitive advantage. Ultimately, the development speed trap is a fact that can be prevented. Knowing the cost of unsustainable velocity and practice that enable long-term productivity, engineering teams can not only be fast but also be sustainable - delivering value now and the basis of even more success in the future.