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

Many firms pick fast progress in business, slow down and die. Good development speed is essential for survival. Imagine we have a great vision for a business concept which is proven in many circumstances by many people. We are very damn sure this product will be a “Blue diamond in the ocean”, so all we need is to just make it with perfection and complete this within estimated budget and time.  

We have a dozen of skilled and experienced developers on board, we crunch and ship sometimes in a certain time period. The team is quiet exhausted. The total progress is just 10 percent of our vision. The project is quiet convincing and has a huge potential, but 10 percent is not enough to penetrate the market. We struggle 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 allotted deadline is perfectly reasonable time frame for it. Maybe the team rushed too fast, had some good releases, but got buried by complexity and technical debt in the end.so, speed in software development is a very complex entity and it is influenced by many things

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

There is “Extreme sprint” in which we run with 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 that everyone knows how bad it is. Burnout is rapid. 

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

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