The Inevitable Downfall of IT Prioritized for Growth Speed

Introduction

In many companies, IT has been introduced as a “means to accelerate business growth.” The decision to launch quickly and capture the market ahead of competitors, even if it means fixing distortions later, seems extremely rational in the short term. However, an IT strategy that prioritizes growth speed above all else almost invariably fails. This article organizes why speed-first IT inevitably hits a wall, not as a technical or operational argument, but as a structural inevitability stemming from management decisions.

Growth Speed Was an “Optimizable Metric”

The primary reason growth speed was prioritized is that it was the most understandable and easiest metric for decision-making. Metrics like sales growth rate, user numbers, and deployment speed are easy to quantify and explain in management meetings. As a result, IT came to be designed as a “device for maximizing growth speed.”

Speed-First Makes Design Seem Unnecessary

When speed is the top priority, judgments like “We don’t need to build it out fully now,” “We’ll think about the future later,” and “Just getting it running is what matters” are repeated. These are all rational justifications for postponing design. The problem is that the very decision not to design becomes a major constraint later.

Dependency on Individuals is a Side Effect of Speed

In speed-focused IT, specifications are not documented, decisions are buried in code or individuals’ heads, and a state emerges where only “those who know” can handle things. This is not a problem of technical skill but an inevitable result of prioritizing speed. Dependency on individuals acts as an accelerator in the early growth stages but becomes the biggest constraint as scale increases.

As You Grow, IT Suddenly “Holds You Back”

Once a business surpasses a certain scale, the very IT that supported its growth begins to be evaluated as “slow,” “inflexible,” and “breaks when changed.” However, this is not because the IT has degraded. It is simply that an IT system designed solely on the premise of growth speed can no longer adapt to a different phase.

Technical Debt is Not a “Failure”

Speed-focused IT inevitably accumulates technical debt. This is not because someone was lazy or made a wrong technical choice. It is a deliberately chosen outcome from the moment management decided to prioritize speed above all. The problem lies in not defining how long that choice would remain valid or when and to what to switch the optimization focus.

Speed Optimization Destroys Reproducibility

In IT prioritized for growth speed, success factors are not verbalized, leading to a state where “we don’t know why it succeeded” and “we can’t reproduce the same success.” This happens because IT becomes a “device for accumulating responses” rather than a “device for reproducing decisions.”

Where Was the Failure as a Management Decision?

The crucial point is that choosing speed itself was not the failure. The failure was transitioning to permanent operation after deciding to optimize for speed, without optimizing anything else. Speed optimization should have been a temporary strategy.

What Was Lost in Exchange for Growth Speed

As a result of prioritizing growth speed, many companies lost the following:

• Consistency in decision-making
• Reproducibility of business operations
• Resilience to organizational scaling

These are all elements that are extremely difficult to recover later.

The Next Question to Ask

The question here should not be “Should we not have chosen growth speed?” The question should be: Did management define “until which phase should speed be the top priority?” and “When and to what should we switch our optimization target?” The next article will examine the management decision of not designing for reproducibility and delve into why success becomes unsustainable.