Build

As technologists we want to build software that is friendly, fast, beautiful, reliable, secure, and scalable. And we expect ourselves to deliver it on time and under budget, because our ultimate goal is to have lots of happy customers who can do what they want: cue Daft Punk’s Technologic! But time and energy are finite, and we simply cannot deliver it all at once. We need to choose our priorities, and this choice is one we should make consciously. Evaluating our software development priorities while dealing with constraints is known as the tradeoff space. How can you make wise tradeoffs for your product? The choice is based on a balance between your technology stack and business model type. “Move fast and break things!” While this has become a popular motto, it doesn’t apply to every company. For example, enterprise software companies that are building system-level software prioritize reliability because customers need to use them. Each change needs to be rigorously tested, and often approved before it can b