“I wish my team could deliver faster.”
“Our delivery is too slow."
I’m talking with a lot of founders and CTOs and I often hear these two statements. Generally, I think product delivery in most companies is too slow. That’s why I’ll explain how I see fast product delivery and pinpoint common behaviours that make companies slow.
In order to do so, we need to get two things straight - what exactly value and fast mean.
What is value and what means fast
Value is the impact you deliver to your users - whether it’s solving a pain point, testing a hypothesis, or driving a key metric like engagement or retention. This impact can happen with minimal development and it’s rarely about delivering the full-blown feature or the idealized product in your head.
Fast, on the other hand, is not just about speed for speed’s sake. It’s about minimizing the time between identifying an idea or hypothesis and delivering something users can interact with. Being fast doesn’t mean cutting corners or rushing - it means being efficient, focused, and iterative. It’s about learning faster by breaking work into small, meaningful chunks that can be shipped and improved upon.
Different companies measure speed differently - some focus on development timelines, others on deployment cycles. For me, the most critical metric is the time it takes from having an idea or a hypothesis to actually delivering value. This is where speed matters: not in building the full feature you’ve dreamed of, but in quickly getting the results needed to test an experiment or deliver the minimal value that makes sense for your customers.
Here’s an example to illustrate this:
You have the hypothesis that your customers would like to have dashboards and different ways, segments, timeframes, and formats to look at data. Normally, building this feature in its full glory - with different customization options and advanced filters - could easily take 3 to 6 months, or even longer if you overcomplicate it.
But instead of jumping straight into the deep end, ask yourself: What’s the smallest version of this feature that delivers value ASAP?
You might start with a single hardcoded report that addresses the most common request. This could be as simple as manually generating a PDF report and sharing it with a few customers. By tracking which sections of the report they interact with most, you can gather valuable insights without spending months building a complex dashboard.
In today’s fast-paced world, I think the best way to validate your assumptions is to put something in users’ hands quickly and observe their reactions. If you can deliver quickly, it will lead to amazing results and help you consistently create a product your users love. On the flip side, if you opt for the "perfect" approach, you might spend 3+ months building a feature you believe your customers need, only to find that they only care about 1/6th of it. Not only does this waste time and effort, but it also leaves your team disappointed and your customers waiting too long for value.
The power of 48-hour releases
The best teams deliver in less than 48 hours. What does this mean in practice? Every 48 hours, they release something new, learning continuously from the market, their customers, and the real-world impact of their work. Compare this to teams operating on a 3-month release cycle or even a 2-week sprint:
The team delivering 130 times a year isn’t cranking out more “lines of code” or unnecessary features. Instead, they focus on delivering value and the specific outcomes their customers need. They make fewer assumptions, ship small chunks quickly, and validate their work by observing whether users engage with what’s released. Combined with insights from interviews, data, and ongoing product work, this approach far outperforms teams locked into longer cycles.
This might sound simple: "Just break features into smaller parts and release them one at a time." In reality, achieving this kind of delivery speed is incredibly challenging, mostly because of lack of buy-in of this mindset at the founder/CTO level. Here are the key issues teams face and how they can be addressed.
Overengineering: the trap of perfection
Teams often fall into the trap of trying to build a "perfect" solution rather than focusing on a minimum viable solution. They aim to account for every possible edge case and scalability concern right from the start, which leads to unnecessary complexity and delays.
Example: A team developing a payment feature spends months designing a scalable system capable of handling millions of transactions, even though the product has fewer than 100 paying customers.
How we fixed this: Engineers are creative problem solvers, which can be both a strength and a challenge, depending on how their work is framed. Without clear constraints, they often overcomplicate tasks. To prevent this, we use time-boxing as a solution. We don’t ask “when this will be finished”, we define the exact value a feature should deliver within a short period (e.g., two days) and emphasize that edge cases and scalability can be addressed later, once the initial solution is validated. You’ll be surprised at how creative engineers can be when given clear goals and constraints to work within.
Unrealistic stakeholder expectations: balance ambition with feasibility
Founders, executives, or clients often demand overly ambitious solutions, underestimating the complexity of development.
Example: A founder pushes for a fully customizable dashboard with drag-and-drop capabilities as the first release, instead of validating demand with a simple, static version.
How we fixed this: We focus on setting clear metrics and defining the single most important goal for the current moment. By aligning stakeholders around these priorities, we ensure everyone understands which initiatives directly contribute to achieving them. This approach creates a natural boundary for scope, leveraging the stakeholders' own objectives to guide decision-making and keep the team focused on what truly matters.
Bloated approval processes
A culture of excessive approvals and micromanagement often slows teams down, creating unnecessary bottlenecks and delays.
Example: Minor changes require review by multiple stakeholders—such as legal, marketing, and senior management—resulting in weeks of back-and-forth before anything can be released.
How we fixed this: We shifted decision-making authority to delivery teams. Each team, consisting of 6–10 people, is fully responsible for delivering value. If they need input from someone outside the team, it becomes their responsibility to seek it out and integrate it, rather than waiting for approvals to cascade down a chain of command. This empowers teams to act autonomously, reduces dependencies, and ensures faster, more streamlined delivery.
Poor communication and collaboration: breaking down silos
When teams work in silos or fail to communicate effectively, it’s almost impossible to align on priorities or execution plans.
Example: The design team completes a set of mockups, but the development team isn’t looped in until weeks later, causing delays in implementation.
How we fixed this: We ensure that goals are shared across all team members, fostering alignment and transparency from the outset. Instead of focusing on individual performance, we hold teams accountable for collective delivery and key metrics.
Lack of empowerment: encouraging ownership and autonomy
When team members lack the confidence or authority to make decisions, progress slows down. This reliance on explicit direction stifles autonomy and creates unnecessary bottlenecks.
Example: Developers hesitate to make decisions about minor changes to user flows, instead waiting for explicit approval from the product manager.
How we fixed this: We gave delivery teams full ownership of the value they deliver. They’re responsible for setting and meeting their own targets and goals, with time-to-delivery as the primary success metric. If team members are stuck waiting for input or approvals, they know they’re not on track—and it’s their job to find a way forward. This shift not only reduced delays but also encouraged a stronger sense of accountability and autonomy within the teams.
Dependency hell: breaking free from bottlenecks
Progress is delayed when teams depend on other teams, services, or external providers.
Example: A frontend team finishes its work but must wait for the backend team to complete an API before the feature can be tested and released.
How we fixed it: We made our engineers cross-functional, so they can handle tasks across different areas as needed. If a backlog forms in a specific domain, team members jump in to help, regardless of their core expertise. This flexibility ensures that no one is stuck waiting, and the team as a whole can keep moving forward.
Fear of experimentation: overcoming the fear of "unfinished"
Many teams shy away from releasing small experiments because they fear failure or criticism for shipping features that feel “unfinished.”
Example: A team delays shipping an MVP chatbot because it doesn’t yet have advanced conversational capabilities.
How we fixed it: We redefined our focus on what matters most—time-to-delivery—as the key metric for success. By measuring and rewarding speed of delivery, we shifted the team’s mindset from prioritizing perfection to valuing fast iterations. This change made it clear that early feedback and rapid learning are more important than polished features. Teams stopped fearing experimentation and started embracing it as a core part of our process.
Inefficient tooling: automate or be slowed down
Outdated tools can make development and testing slower than necessary.
Example: Teams relying on manual deployment processes spend hours setting up environments, instead of automating the process.
How we fixed it: We prioritize automating the essentials—deployments, testing, and monitoring—to streamline workflows and reduce friction. But the real game-changer was implementing an easy rollback mechanism. Teams knew that if something went wrong, they could quickly revert changes without risk. This safety net gave everyone the confidence to move faster, experiment more freely, and focus on delivering value without hesitation. Fast delivery is impossible without this kind of foundation in place.
Resistance to change: breaking free from fixed mindsets
One of the biggest blockers to fast delivery is resistance to adopting agile practices or new methodologies.
Example: A company insists on detailed upfront planning and waterfall-style execution, making quick iterations impossible.
How we fixed it: Changing deeply rooted mindsets is challenging. We started by setting short timeframes to test new approaches, giving teams and leaders an opportunity to see the benefits of faster, iterative work. However, not everyone adapts, and when clear progress wasn’t evident, we made the tough decision to replace individuals who resisted change. While difficult, this step was necessary to create a culture where innovation and agility could thrive—without it, progress stalls, and the team as a whole suffers.
Cultural misalignment: progress over perfection
A company’s culture can either drive speed or completely stifle it. Cultures that penalize mistakes or place perfection above progress often paralyze teams, preventing them from moving quickly.
Example: Developers hesitate to release code incrementally because they fear backlash for introducing bugs in production.
How we fixed it: Leadership plays a crucial role in defining culture. We focused on clear communication and aligning rewards with the behaviors we wanted to encourage. Leaders actively reminded the team of the company’s goals and values, emphasizing progress and iteration over flawless execution. By sharing personal examples of learning from mistakes, we created a culture where experimentation felt safe and encouraged. Giving context and fostering psychological safety became foundational to shifting the mindset from fear to action.
In summary
The best teams focus on breaking work into small, meaningful chunks, delivering value quickly, and iterating based on real feedback. They don’t overengineer, they don’t get stuck in endless approvals, and they don’t let perfection slow them down.
It’s not easy, but it’s worth it. Faster delivery means faster learning, happier teams, and better products. Get this right, and you’ll wonder how you ever worked any other way.
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