In my last blog I talked about reasons to go slow to gain velocity in #SaaS product development: Planning, Design, Testing. Today’s #SaaS world is all about fast. We talk about design fast, develop fast, deploy fast, fail fast, recover fast! So when do you put the peddle to the metal?

• Agile design is done
• Agreement on “Definition of Done” of each sprint item
• Foreseeable impediments are neutralized
• People, process and Technology are in-line and aligned

At this point, it is time to plan your next sprint, block the time for engineering to go “heads down” and go. Some teams fall into the trap of closing all the loops, documenting everything, etc. Basically waiting until they are at some arbitrary 100% before execution. Really, getting to 80% is good enough. Why? 1) 100% is elusive 2) learnings along the way will inform the path forward (i.e. there are always unknowns) and 3) #1 & #2 will result in substantial, unnecessary refactoring..

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