When Speed Becomes a Signal
Speed has become a shortcut for seriousness.
If a product moves fast, it’s assumed to be alive.
If it slows down, people start asking uncomfortable questions.
That reflex says more about the industry than about the product — especially in an environment that still treats growth and momentum as default proof of value, even when stepping away from growth-at-all-costs is a deliberate decision.
Visibility vs. Value
Speed is visible.
Stability isn’t.
You can point to releases, updates, roadmaps, velocity charts. You can show activity. You can prove momentum.
Speed produces artifacts that are easy to measure and easy to sell.
Stability produces almost nothing.
No announcements.
No spikes.
No urgency.
Just software that behaves the same way today as it did yesterday.
Why Stability Looks Like Inaction
That’s why stability is so often undervalued.
It doesn’t look like work.
It doesn’t generate stories.
It doesn’t reassure stakeholders who expect constant movement as proof that something is happening.
But for users, stability is rarely abstract.
What Stability Feels Like to Users
It shows up as trust.
As muscle memory.
As the quiet confidence that a tool won’t surprise you at the worst possible moment.
When that confidence disappears, users rarely complain loudly. They adapt for a while — and then they leave, often not because something broke outright, but because the product stopped feeling reliable enough to depend on, which is exactly how trust erosion usually plays out in practice
when users abandon products they no longer trust.
Who Speed Really Serves
Speed, on the other hand, mostly benefits the people building and managing the product.
It compresses timelines.
It creates the feeling of progress.
It reduces the discomfort of saying “we don’t know yet.”
Users inherit the side effects.
They adapt to shifting behavior.
They relearn interfaces.
They absorb breakage disguised as improvement.
Friction Disguised as Progress
Over time, speed turns into friction — just delivered in smaller, more frequent doses.
What looks like forward motion from the inside often feels like instability from the outside.
Stability as a Discipline
Stability doesn’t mean freezing a product in place.
It means choosing when change is justified, and when it’s simply noise.
It means accepting that not every good idea deserves to exist, and not every improvement is worth the cost of disruption — which is why
deliberately building fewer features is often a sign of stronger design.
Why Stability Is an Active Choice
That kind of discipline is harder than moving fast.
It requires restraint.
It requires saying no.
It requires being comfortable with silence.
Choosing stability over speed isn’t accidental; it’s the same reasoning behind
optimizing for predictable behavior rather than constant acceleration.
What Can’t Be Faked
In an industry addicted to motion, stability looks passive.
In reality, it’s one of the most active choices a team can make.
Speed is overrated because it’s easy to confuse with progress.
Stability isn’t — because it can’t be faked.