Shipping faster doesn't always mean shipping better.

My team is filled with brilliant engineers. They ship new features almost every day.

The problem is... they ship without preparing their customers.

The product changes suddenly. You were used to a button in one place; now it's somewhere else. A workflow you relied on has a new path. Users are forced to pause and relearn a tool they thought they already knew.

We’re proud of our speed — and that pride can turn into an echo chamber. Inside the team, “we shipped three features this week” feels like a win. Outside the team, it might feel like, “I can’t rely on this product to stay still long enough to get my work done.”

Sometimes you have to slow down to speed up.

I’m not saying we should throw heavy process at every tiny change. But there are ways to move quickly without turning your users into beta testers:

• Put the bravest users on a nightly build.
• Offer early access or a beta channel for people who want the cutting edge.
• Keep a stable, default build where changes are deliberate, communicated, and predictable.

If we don’t do this, we move faster than we can think. We break things without realizing it. Our feedback loop becomes “wait until a user complains” — and many won’t complain. They’ll just quietly stop using the product.

Speed can win the product race for a while. But past a certain point, that same speed pushes people away. You should iterate quickly, but not change flippantly.

Most users just want to get their task done. They don’t want to relearn your app every week. They don’t care how amazing your team is at fixing bugs. They care about whether they can reliably turn to you, under pressure, and get something done.

Once you break that trust, you might lose a user forever. People will choose an “inferior” product if it’s a stable product. Stability often beats shiny new abilities.

Users want to return without thrash.

Relentless speed creates thrash.

So think about your users when you ship. Remember that they rely on your tool. Don’t make it hard, scary, or painful to come back.

Find the marriage between stable and fast.