Engineering Speed vs. Business Expectations: Why the Disconnect Exists

Engineering Speed vs. Business Expectations: Why the Disconnect Exists

Levan Mamulashvili

Introduction: Is Engineering Really Slow?

If you've ever sat in a meeting where a Tribe Lead, Product Owner, or CEO complained that engineering is too slow, you've probably heard something like this:

🚨 “Why does a simple mobile UI change take 5 months?”
🚨 “The tech team just doesn’t care about business priorities.”
🚨 “Engineers are obsessed with reengineering everything instead of delivering.”

But here’s the real question:
Is engineering actually slow, or is there a deeper leadership issue?

From my experience meeting with tribe leads, product owners, and engineering managers, the biggest problem isn’t execution speed—it’s the gap in technical leadership.

📌 Business leaders see missed deadlines but not the reasons behind them.
📌 Tech leads fail to communicate trade-offs, risks, and how to move faster.
📌 Reengineering requests become the default excuse instead of real solutions.

This post will explore:
✅ Why product and business teams think engineering is slow
✅ The hidden reasons behind long delivery times
✅ How strong tech leadership can break this cycle
✅ When reengineering is necessary—and when it’s just a distraction

Why Business Thinks Engineering Is Slow

When product changes take months instead of weeks, business leaders often assume:

  • Engineers are not taking responsibility
  • Tech teams are underqualified or inefficient
  • Developers only care about their own scope, not business goals

But the reality is more complex.

Case Study: The 5-Month Mobile App Change

💡 Imagine a retail company that wants to update their mobile checkout flow.

🔹 Business Expectation:

  • “This is a simple UI change—it should take 2 weeks max.”

🔹 Engineering Reality:

  • The app was built 5 years ago with an outdated framework.
  • There are no automated tests, making every change risky.
  • The checkout flow depends on an external payment provider that has compliance requirements.
  • The backend was never designed for customization, so even UI changes need backend modifications.
  • The company is still using a manual release process, adding weeks of delay just for approvals.

📌 Result: What seems like a small UI change actually involves tech debt, external dependencies, compliance issues, and inefficient deployment pipelines.

The Real Problem: Lack of Technical Leadership, Not Just Engineering Speed

Where Tech Leadership Fails:

1️⃣ Lack of Communication

  • Engineers rarely proactively explain challenges to business teams.
  • No one tells leadership what will actually make the team faster.

2️⃣ Narrow Scope of Engineering Managers

  • Some tech leads focus only on tasks, not the big picture.
  • They don’t challenge inefficient workflows or suggest structural improvements.

3️⃣ Refactoring Obsession vs. Strategic Change

  • Instead of improving critical bottlenecks, teams default to full reengineering.
  • Business hears: “We need 6 months for a full rewrite” instead of “Here’s how we can deliver in phases.”

How to Fix This: A Leadership Approach to Faster Delivery

1. Engineering Must Communicate Reality—Early & Often

✅ Tech leaders should preemptively explain constraints and trade-offs.
✅ Use visuals like a Dependency Map to show bottlenecks.
✅ Make business teams part of prioritization decisions.

📌 Example: Instead of saying, “This change will take 5 months,” say:
🔹 "We can deliver 60% of the improvements in 4 weeks if we prioritize X over Y."
🔹 "The core issue is our outdated CI/CD pipeline—if we fix it, future changes will be 3x faster."

2. Don’t Default to Reengineering—Find Targeted Fixes

🚫 Full rewrites should be the last resort, not the first solution.
✅ Focus on small, impactful changes that remove bottlenecks.

📌 Example:

  • Instead of rewriting an entire backend, introduce API gateways to allow gradual updates.
  • Instead of rebuilding a UI framework, isolate the problem areas and migrate in phases.

3. Engineers Need to Think Like Product Owners

Tech leads must go beyond execution and understand business needs.
✅ Align technical debt reduction with business impact.
✅ Treat platform investments as revenue enablers, not just code improvements.
✅ Work with product teams to prioritize technical changes that accelerate feature delivery.

📌 Example:
Instead of “We need 3 months to clean tech debt”, say:
🔹 "If we improve our testing infrastructure now, we can ship features 2x faster for the rest of the year."

4. Drive Speed Through Process Improvements, Not Just More Engineers

❌ Hiring more engineers won’t solve process inefficiencies.
✅ Optimizing development workflows, reducing dependencies, and improving automation will.

📌 Key Areas to Fix:

  • CI/CD Pipelines → Faster deployments
  • Automated Testing → Reduced QA bottlenecks
  • Infrastructure as Code → Faster environment setups

📌 Case Study:
A fintech company reduced feature delivery time by 40% by shifting from manual testing to automated regression tests, allowing teams to release every 2 weeks instead of every 2 months.

Final Thoughts: Faster Engineering Requires Better Leadership

Business leaders aren’t wrong to expect faster delivery.
But speed doesn’t come from pushing engineers harder—it comes from removing structural bottlenecks.

👉 Tech leaders must step up, communicate better, and drive process improvements.
👉 Refactoring should be strategic—not an excuse for slow delivery.
👉 The best engineering teams work in sync with product and business, not against them.

Next time someone asks, “Why is engineering so slow?” instead of blaming developers, ask:
“What’s blocking them, and how can leadership remove those barriers?”

That’s how you build fast, efficient, and scalable engineering teams. 🚀

Back to blog