It was very well said by Abraham Lincoln “If I hadnine hours to chop down a tree, I’d spent the first six sharpening my ax”. Every Entrepreneur of anysoftware company want to create a software on a very rapid pace.  Time is considered as the mostexpensive and valuable resource for any IT firm.  We can’t waste it onRe-designing and Re- factoring .Every CEO must need to plan for TimeManagement. For these activities, Managers are there who analyze the plan ofaction, and execute them accordingly, also responsible for defining commonobjectives for the team and divide the work among resources. They are alsoresponsible for maintaining coordination between the team members and theclient. 

Manyfirms pick fast progress in business, slow down and die. Good development speedis essential for survival. Imagine we have a great vision for a businessconcept which is proven in many circumstances by many people. We are very damnsure this product will be a “Blue diamond in the ocean”, so all we need is tojust make it with perfection and complete this within estimated budget andtime.  

We have adozen of skilled and experienced developers on board, we crunch and shipsometimes in a certain time period. The team is quiet exhausted. The totalprogress is just 10 percent of our vision. The project is quiet convincing andhas a huge potential, but 10 percent is not enough to penetrate the market. Westruggle for some more months, have average traction, have below average sales,have no money and end up quitting with no company. Great vision is shattered by slow Progress. Maybe the allotteddeadline is perfectly reasonable time frame for it. Maybe the team rushed toofast, had some good releases, but got buried by complexity and technical debtin the end.so, speed in software development is a very complex entity and it isinfluenced by many things

In software development speed is not considered as asingle entity, it is two sided, one is short term speed also called “Sprint” and the other is long termspeed also called “Marathon”. Insoftware development we can’t have both. Maybe we maintain a very good speed inthe beginning for certain period of time, but it is extremely unlike we can dothat for long run. At some point most of the developers will reach a “fuck it point” and drop performanceenormously. Our goal is to run a very long distance (years) with the highestpossible pace. That is what Marathon is about. We need endurance and evenness.

There is“Extreme sprint” in which we runwith our top speed, work 12 -14 hours a day fueled by energetic drinks,caffeine, sugar and God knows what else. The good thing about this mode is thateveryone knows how bad it is. Burnout is rapid. 

We alsohave “Moderate Sprint”, we canwork 8-10 hours a day, squeezing every drop of productivity. No small talks, nosport activities at work, no fun. Some companies do nothing to make work interesting,challenging and fun. Projects are always late and everybody is always underpressure. Unfortunately, this mode can last for years.

Thenthere is “Marathon” .This modelooks optimal. We do our best working 6-8 hours/day, find time to relax andexercise. We don’t catch every single minute and have the luxury to think abouta problem for some time. No rush to push things out of the door RIGHT NOW! Thatsounds good. However, many managers are not satisfied with Marathon pace. Theywant to deliver things faster. I believe this pure mode is quite rare inreality. In most companies managers try to speed things up and do that in themost stupid way, using overtime, task pushing and “we are the heroes”motivation.