Speed vs Quality

I stumbled upon this excellent article written by Brandon Chu on Confidence determines speed vs. quality that I would love to elaborate it here.

Speed and Quality are considered the opposite things in building products and having one comes at the cost of the other. To choose one over the other, you’ll need to understand your confidence level on problem that is being addressed.

Confidence in importance of the problem

Confidence on the chosen solution

By understanding your confidence level on the problem and solution space, you can easily determine what to pick between speed and quality.

Confident on problem importance and solution correctness = Quality

Confident on problem importance but not on solution correctness = Balance between speed and quality

Not so confident on problem importance = Speed

High confidence in problem and solution space = Quality:

When you are confident on the problem importance and solution space, focus on getting it right and build the best looking and working product for customers. Trading off time for quality is fine when you are super confident.

High confidence in problem but low confidence in solution = Balance:

Focus on experimenting, and try the build-mesaure-learn loop to quickly iterate. Make educated guess, refute hypothesis, gain confidence and arrive at a better solution over time.

Low confidence in problem = Speed:

Focus on speed when your confidence is low on the problem. Build an MVP, try fake door tests, talk to customers, gain clarity and confidence. This process will help you determine if the problem is important to customers and worth solving it.

Gaining confidence:

Now that we understand confidence is the driving factor to determine if speed or quality is good for your product, it is important for product leader to iterate over a number of problems, learn from insights and build confidence over time.