Quality is the only way that a software development team can go fast. Quality problems tend to have compounding effects on the ability of a team to deliver value. Poor quality tends to cause the time it takes to complete a new feature to reach a plateau, where a similarly-sized feature takes more and more time to complete as the project ages. Martin Fowler refers to this as The Design Stamina Hypothesis.

Continual effort towards improving quality is the only way to avoid diminishing returns. Too many teams fall into the trap of tolerating poor quality, and discover too late that delivering features has become increasingly more difficult, time consuming, costly, and risky. The industry research confirms: the only way to go fast is to go well.