Why Reliability Outperforms Speed?

A seed naturally grows

As a science graduate, I’m always impressed by the beauty of nature.

Intro

Have you ever been in a conversation with others about delivering fast? I have — frequently. Delivering fast and delivering reliable have tradeoffs. In this article, I’ll share my view on when I prefer delivering fast or delivering reliable.

Definitions

I’m a science graduate, we learned to define things before starting to work on something. Let’s start:

Delivering fast

It typically means quickly shipping code, features, or products while maintaining quality. It often involves:

• Shorter development cycles (e.g., Agile, CI/CD)
• Quick iteration based on user feedback
• Automation (testing, deployment, monitoring)
• Efficient collaboration between teams (product, design, engineering)

Delivering reliably

It means consistently shipping software that works as expected, meets requirements, and maintains stability over time. It involves:

• Predictable releases with minimal disruptions
• High-quality code that is well-tested and maintainable
• Resilience to failures, with robust monitoring and rollback strategies
• Consistent performance across different environments
• Process maturity (e.g., automated testing, deployment pipelines, version control best practices)

Essentially, it’s about ensuring that what you deliver works well, every time, rather than just being fast.

The case for Delivering Fast

It’s strong, especially in competitive and rapidly evolving markets. Here is why speed matters:

Competitive advantage:

• Get to market faster than competitors
• Respond quickly to user needs and feedback
• Capitalize on emerging trends before they fade

Faster learning and iteration:

• Shorter feedback loops lead to better product-market fit
• Quickly test hypotheses and pivot if needed
• Reduce risk by validating ideas early

Business impact:

• Faster value delivery leads to increased revenue potential
• Early releases can attract users, investors, and partners
• Delays often mean missed opportunities

Team efficiency:

• Avoid long, complex development cycles that slow momentum
• Keep engineers engaged by seeing their work go live quickly
• Encourage a culture of agility and adaptability

Remember that, speed without quality leads to product/design/engineering debt, instability, and rework.

The case for Delivering Reliably

It’s as strong as delivering fast, especially long-term stability and user trust matter. Here is why reliability is critical:

User trust and satisfaction:

• Bugs and downtime erode confidence in product
• A reliable experience keeps users engaged and reduces churn
• Enterprises and critical applications demand stability

Operational stability:

• Fewer incidents mean less firefighting and on-call stress
• Predictable deployments reduce the risk of breaking production
• Strong testing and monitoring to catch issues before they escalate.

Business and financial benefits:

• Downtime and failures can be expensive (lost revenue, SLA penalties)
• Avoiding rework saves time and engineering effort
• A stable product strengthens your reputation and customer retention

Scalability and long-term speed:

• A solid foundation prevents tech debt from slowing future development
• Reliable systems support growth without constant maintenance overhead
• Teams can move faster when they trust that changes won’t break things

Remember that, focusing only on reliability can slow down innovation, which is why the best teams aim to balance fast and reliable delivery.

Finding the Balance

Balance is similar to doctor visits, which mean depends on physical examination, radiology, blood levels etc. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Many articles on the internet will explain how to find the right balance. Therefore, I won’t. In this article, I’ll explain why I stick to only Delivering Reliably.

Sticking to delivering reliably

The real-world scenarios are highly complex, and there is no guarantee of return on investment. If you look at the above cases, I have seen so many organizations developing software like crazy fell into the same situation. I have seen enough painful situation after a solution is accepted by users. However, the solution is not production grade, but again, it’s now accepted. Downtime or bug start causing dissatisfaction in the user experience. Especially today, many people are not tolerant to bad software. Even if your product delivers value to the end user, if the end user is not satisfied upon facing a bug or downtime, it leads to loss of reputation. Repetitive failures lead to loss of customer, loss of customer leads to bankrupts. Winning back a lost customer can cost 3–10x more than keeping, them in the first place. Acquiring a new customer is 5–25x more expensive than retaining an existing one.

If you don’t know what you are doing, most likely you will stick to delivering fast. Even though this approach is heavily adapted in the industries, I prefer not to develop any terrible software which will be used tomorrow. Instead, I do my job as a product professional, and do as much research as possible to conceptualize all my findings in a user journey which people will love, and deliver value to them. Upon conceptual work, depending on confidence level, we challenge the concept with users to see if it’s going to help them. We repeat this in a feedback loop until we gain confidence in whatever we will develop. When we gain enough confidence, now we can go to tactical strategies for delivering a reliable product. We need to exactly define how to do this. Because most people potentially will fall into the waterfall trap. That’s wrong. We can still extract an MVP from the concept, start delivering small chunks in short cycles, and continue validating with every release.

While the ideal scenario often involves a balance, my experience has led me to strongly favor delivering reliably for the following reasons... Because there will be no time later to cover product/design/engineering debt. Once people adapt your product, they will come up with too much demand, which means you will probably fall into the development trap as well. While prioritizing users, you will start sacrificing your product and the team behind it. On the other side, there is no unique idea anymore. Going fast for what? To make X amount today, which will be used to cover all the created mess tomorrow? All decisions come with an expense of something. Therefore, I always think in long term, potentially 5–10 years ahead. Based on that, craft a product strategy, and start executing it. When the foundation of product is good, future increments and the debt will be easier. Even though you are behind your competitors at the moment, with the help of good sales and marketing colleagues, your product will shine in the market by surpassing the expectations of users.

Even though this is my preferred way of working, it’s recommended to evaluate how you can work based on your environment, and who is available. Depending on who can complement you how, you should adapt the strategy.