Trade-Offs: Speed vs Stability vs Cost

In engineering, there are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.

The classic "Project Management Triangle" is widely known: Fast, Good, Cheap. Pick two.

In software architecture, we view it slightly differently: Velocity, Stability, Efficiency.

1. Velocity (Speed to Ship)

Focusing purely on speed means cutting corners. You skip tests. You leave To-Dos in the code.

• Pros: You beat competitors to market. You validate ideas fast.
• Cons: You accrue Technical Debt. Your system becomes fragile.

2. Stability (Reliability/Uptime)

Focusing purely on stability creates bureaucracy. "We can't deploy on Fridays." "We need 3 approval layers."

• Pros: The system never goes down. Customers trust you.
• Cons: Feature development crawls. You get out-innovated.

3. Efficiency (Cost/Performance)

Focusing purely on efficiency leads to premature optimization. "Let's rewrite this in Rust to save 5ms."

• Pros: Low cloud bills. Snappy performance.
• Cons: Huge engineering hours spent on minor gains.

The Balancing Act

At DJC, our trade-off philosophy changes based on stage:

• Prototype Phase: 100% Velocity. Stability doesn't matter if nobody uses it.
• Growth Phase: 60% Velocity, 40% Stability. We need to ship, but we can't crash.
• Scale Phase: 40% Velocity, 40% Stability, 20% Efficiency. Now cost matters.

Explicit Decisions

The worst trade-offs are the ones you make accidentally. "We didn't write tests because we forgot." -> Bad. "We consciously chose not to write tests for this experimental feature because we might delete it next week." -> Good.

Make the trade-off explicit. Write it down. Own the debt.