Speed kills. But in product development, the lack of speed kills faster.
There’s an old engineering adage: “Move fast and break things.” Most teams have heard it. Few actually do it.
The reality is uncomfortable: speed and caution are inversely related. You cannot optimize for both. You have to choose.
The Cost of Caution
When teams optimize for caution, they spend weeks planning before building. They spend more weeks reviewing before shipping. The result? By the time they release, the market has moved on. Their assumption about what users want is stale. Their competitive advantage is gone.
Meanwhile, a team that ships twice a week learns from 104 releases per year. They fail fast, learn faster, and iterate based on what actually works.
Why Velocity Wins
Velocity creates information. When you ship quickly, you answer questions immediately:
- Do users actually want this?
- How do they use it?
- Where do they get stuck?
- What’s the real problem?
Caution answers none of these questions. It only delays the moment when you get answers.
The Math
Team A spends 3 months building, 2 months launching, discovers their idea was wrong: 5 months lost.
Team B ships version 1 in 2 weeks, learns it’s wrong in 1 week, ships version 2 in 1 week, discovers it’s close but needs adjustment, ships version 3 in 1 week. Total: 5 weeks to find product-market fit.
Team B moved 4x faster to the same insight.
The Objection: “But we’ll ship broken things”
Yes. You will. Good.
Ship a basic version. Find the real problems fast. Fix them. Repeat.
Don’t ship dangerously broken things. Ship minimally viable things. There’s a difference.
Shipping quickly teaches you what actually matters. Caution teaches you nothing except how to delay.
Velocity Beats Caution
The pragmatic truth: failing fast is better than succeeding slowly. The companies that win are the ones that learned to move. They fail more, but they learn faster.
Ship today. Learn tomorrow. Adjust the day after.
Velocity isn’t reckless. It’s just impatient enough to matter.