Speed vs Quality in Development: Finding the Balance

The issue of speed and quality is particularly acute in development. We are used to thinking that the more time is spent developing a product, the better the result, and vice versa. But is that really the case?

On one hand, it seems logical that speed is achieved by skipping testing, using quick hacks, and often sacrificing clean architecture. The service may end up with bugs, but at least it will be delivered quickly.

On the other hand, while this is a possible approach, it is by no means the only way to achieve speed in development. In this article, I will suggest several strategies for working on an MVP that can speed up the process while still resulting in a product that can be developed and improved for many years to come.

Method 1: Reduce Product Features

The main goal of an MVP — and virtually any feature — is to solve a specific problem for the customer. Think about it: is all the functionality you planned really necessary? What can be cut to shorten the development time? What absolutely must be included in the MVP?

And this is not just about obvious excesses. You can also cut features that are considered "standard." For example, instead of supporting user-uploaded profile pictures, you could integrate Gravatar, or replace traditional user registration with Google OAuth login.

Method 2: Limit Supported Platforms and Variations

In the early stages, you might release only a desktop application for Windows, or forgo supporting multiple image formats — just stick to JPEG. I want to emphasize that here I am referring not so much to product features themselves (which we discussed earlier), but rather their technical implementation.

At the same time, design your architecture to allow for future feature expansion — simply return NotImplemented more often for now. This way, you will spend less effort on development while keeping the door open for future improvements.

Method 3: Simplify Testing

The most obvious option is to reduce the time spent on testing. Yes, in this case, it won't be possible to thoroughly test the product. But perhaps for an MVP, it will be enough to perform only the necessary minimum of tests — check the code locally and in a staging environment before release.

I highly recommend writing unit tests, but not necessarily running them at this stage. Even if you just outline the test cases, you will be able to spot shortcomings and gain non-obvious insights for subsequent manual verification. This is a great example of achieving 80% of the result by doing 20% of the work, especially in the short term.

Method 4: Use a Simpler Architecture

In most cases, you can avoid using three different databases, microservices, or message queues without any significant loss. However, it is crucial to separate logic into loosely coupled parts of the application. Avoid unnecessary complexity — in most cases, simple separation into functions or modules will be enough.

Regarding architecture, there are two main principles to follow:

• The correctness of architectural decisions is less important than the ability to change them later.
• The more foundational a component is, the more important its quality — and vice versa.

Here are three more important tips:

• Don't overcomplicate things — most product ideas will never be implemented, and among those that are, many will not work out.
• You can afford to neglect performance — while you shouldn't deliberately design inefficient solutions, the difference between one second and five seconds is often noticeable but not critical.
• Don't try to solve problems with libraries — they often create more issues later. The worst case is when you try to compensate for a lack of knowledge by installing a library (for example, for working with graphs). Libraries are tools, not magic. If you don't understand at least the basics of how they work, it's very easy to get stuck.

Conclusion

Remember that an MVP serves both as a hypothesis test and often as the first version of a product. Therefore, it’s important to strike a balance between technical decisions and business expectations and to avoid extremes. There’s no need to excessively cut functionality or release code that is 100% covered with tests.

If you avoid major mistakes and maintain a healthy balance, you will be able to create an MVP that saves you a significant amount of resources during both development and future maintenance.