Time to Production Is the Only Metric That Matters Now

"The biggest metric that I use and I talk to my team about is the time to production from initial idea to do you have a product that can do what it is that you want."

This was Josh describing how he evaluates his team's effectiveness. Not lines of code. Not features shipped. Not story points completed.

Just: how long from "we need this" to "it works"?

That timeline is compressing fast. And companies that can't keep up are going to find themselves replaced by ones that can.

The Speed Expectation

Customers are already conditioned to expect instant solutions.

Want to watch a movie? Stream it now. Want to buy something? Same-day delivery. Want a ride? Car arrives in 4 minutes. Want dinner? Delivered in 30 minutes.

That expectation is bleeding into everything, including software. When a customer has a problem, they expect a solution—not a promise that it's "on the roadmap" for next quarter.

The companies that can respond to customer needs in days instead of months have a massive advantage. They can:

• Fix issues before customers churn
• Add features while competitors are still planning
• Iterate based on real feedback instead of guesses
• Capture opportunities before they disappear

What AI Actually Changed

AI didn't just make some tasks faster. It changed what's possible for small teams.

Chuck built out a 50-state compliant mortgage AI system. As an individual. In weeks.

"Give me 45 minutes, I'll be right back."

That's not a figure of speech. He can add a major feature—like support for a new loan type—in under an hour. Because the system is built for rapid iteration, and because AI tools make that iteration dramatically faster.

Five years ago, that same project would require:

• A team of engineers
• Months of development
• Significant capital
• Careful project management

Today it requires one person who understands the problem deeply and knows how to leverage the tools.

The Competitive Moat is Speed

Traditional competitive moats—brand, distribution, capital, switching costs—still matter. But they matter less when a competitor can:

• See your feature
• Build something better
• Ship it tomorrow
• Start acquiring your customers next week

The moat of "we're already established" gets eroded when someone else can build faster than you can defend.

This is why "time to production" is the metric that matters. If you can go from idea to shipped feature faster than anyone else in your market, you can:

• Out-innovate competitors
• Respond to market changes in real-time
• Test ideas cheaply (build it and see)
• Compound improvements over time

The company that ships 50 improvements per month will beat the company that ships 5, even if the 5 are individually better.

The "Good Enough" Window

There's a window between when a solution is "good enough" to ship and when it's "perfect."

Fast companies ship at "good enough" and iterate. Slow companies wait for "perfect" and get beaten to market.

"Good enough" means:

• It solves the core problem
• It doesn't break anything critical
• Customers can use it immediately
• It can be improved based on feedback

"Perfect" means:

• It handles every edge case
• It's been reviewed by everyone
• It satisfies every stakeholder's preferences
• It probably took 3x longer than necessary

The problem with waiting for perfect: by the time you ship, customer needs have changed, and some faster competitor has already captured the market with their "good enough" version.

Measuring It Right

If you want to optimize for time to production, you have to measure it.

Start tracking:

• Idea to prototype: How long from "we should build this" to "here's a working demo"?
• Prototype to production: How long from "this works in testing" to "customers can use it"?
• Production to iteration: How long from "customers gave feedback" to "we shipped the improvement"?

Each of these intervals can be compressed. Each has its own bottlenecks (decisions, reviews, deployments, etc.). Find the bottlenecks and eliminate them.

Some practical improvements:

• Reduce decision layers. Every approval step adds time. Cut the ones that don't add value.
• Automate deployments. Manual deployment processes add hours or days. Automate them.
• Trust your team. If changes require multiple reviews, you'll slow down. Hire people you trust and let them ship.
• Build modular systems. Tightly coupled systems make every change risky. Loosely coupled systems let you change pieces independently.

The AI Multiplier

AI tools make all of this faster, but only if you're set up to use them.

If your codebase is a mess, AI struggles to help. If your processes are manual, AI can't automate them. If your team doesn't know the tools, they can't leverage them.

But if you're set up right, AI becomes a multiplier on every step:

• Prototyping: AI can generate starting points in minutes
• Development: AI can write boilerplate and suggest implementations
• Testing: AI can generate test cases and find edge cases
• Documentation: AI can write docs as you build
• Iteration: AI can analyze feedback and suggest improvements

The companies that learn to wield these tools effectively will operate at a different speed than those that don't.

The Market Doesn't Wait

Here's the uncomfortable truth: your customers don't care about your internal processes.

They care about whether you can solve their problem. If you can't do it fast enough, someone else will.

The mortgage broker who needs a compliant AI receptionist doesn't care if your enterprise software team needs 6 months to build it. If Chuck can build it in 6 weeks, Chuck gets the business.

The HVAC company that needs better lead capture doesn't care about your product roadmap. If a startup can ship what they need next month, they'll switch.

Market timing is everything. Being first with something good beats being third with something great.

Building for Speed

If you want to compete on time to production, you need to build your entire organization around it.

Hire generalists. Specialists are great for specific problems, but generalists can move between problems without handoffs. Handoffs are where time dies.

Reduce meetings. Every meeting is time not building. Be aggressive about which meetings actually need to happen.

Build in public (internally). Don't wait for "done" to show progress. Share work in progress. Get feedback early. Catch problems before they're expensive to fix.

Accept imperfection. The first version won't be perfect. Ship it anyway. Make it better based on real usage.

Learn the tools. AI tools, deployment automation, testing frameworks—invest in learning the things that make you faster.

The Window is Now

The time to production gap between fast companies and slow companies is wider than it's ever been. That gap is an opportunity.

If you can move fast, you can win market share from companies that can't. If you can't move fast, you'll lose market share to companies that can.

The metric that matters isn't revenue or headcount or funding. It's how quickly you can turn "we should build this" into "customers are using it."

Compress that timeline, and everything else follows.