When speed is an advantage, how to talk trade-offs to the CFO and real-world examples – this is the guide to optimising for cost vs speed in transformation projects.

In every major transformation programme, digital executives face the same pressure: Deliver fast enough to show momentum, but remain disciplined enough to justify the spend. It’s why so many enterprise conversations start with the question of optimising for cost vs speed.

But that framing is almost always misleading.

As Kohde Founding Director Joe van der Walt puts it:

‍“The choice is never really about cost, because cost is almost a constant. The real question is speed versus quality.”

Once you see the decision through that lens, the path to sustainable transformation becomes clearer and far more predictable. As we learnt on a recent project…

Case Study: When “Speed First” Ends Up Costing Millions

Recently, one of Kohde’s clients built early internal systems rapidly, using a single developer. It was the right call at the time. The business was still finding its footing, learning fast and speed helped them move.

But as the company scaled, the shortcuts taken during those early builds began to surface. Manual processes fell apart, reporting became unreliable and small defects compounded into major operational friction and rising costs.

When Kohde stepped in, the team discovered a flaw in the payment algorithm.
Fixing that single defect recovered R1 million per month (R12 million a year) in previously lost revenue, directly attributable to poor software quality and inadequate testing.

“Speed is strategic early on, but it incurs technical debt,” Joe explains, “but it becomes a liability if you stay in “build-fast” mode for too long.

When to Prioritise Speed

1. Early Validation

When an idea is unproven, the fastest path to real-world feedback matters more than perfect architecture. Speed shortens the learning cycle, limits sunk cost and reduces the chance of investing heavily in the wrong direction.

2. Competitive Timing

If a competitor is moving or a new opportunity window is closing, being first-to-market can create advantages that outweigh potential rework later.

3. Disposable or Temporary Work

Proofs of concept, prototypes, and experiments don’t require robust engineering. They need to be fast and cheap.

4. Strategic Uncertainty

When the business model, user behaviour or revenue mechanics are still shifting, you cannot optimise for durability. You optimise for discovery and learning.

But speed only works when you acknowledge the truth: Speed is a debt-generating strategy. And debt must be intentional, controlled and paid back quickly.

When to Focus on Cost Instead

1. When You Expect the System to Scale

Revenue-generating platforms, customer-facing tools and core operational systems will live for years. Optimising for cost here means investing in quality early so you don’t pay exponentially later.

2. When the Architecture Must Be Sustainable

If a system needs to plug into multiple departments or sits at the centre of a value chain, stability and extensibility matter more than quick delivery.

3. When the Risk of Failure Is High

Compliance-heavy environments, financial workflows and health data systems don’t allow shortcuts. Speed-first approaches here become extremely expensive in the aftermath.

4. When Cheap Now Becomes Expensive Later

Negotiating short-term price savings on engineering often leads to higher remediation costs. The “saving” is an illusion that creates future operational drag.

“People often think negotiating a lower price reduces cost, but it doesn’t,” Joe explains. “It just moves cost into the future, to a time when it balloons.”

How to Know When to Focus on Which

Speed is for learning, quality is for execution and scaling.

If you’re still proving an idea, testing behaviour or validating demand, prioritise speed; you want fast answers with minimal investment.

If you’re building something that must scale, integrate or support long-term business outcomes, prioritise quality — the upfront effort protects cost and accelerates future delivery.

How to Communicate These Trade-Offs to CFOs and Boards

The hard part isn’t the logic, it’s alignment. Boards think in financial terms, not engineering language, so frame the decision in ways they immediately recognise.

• Focus on cost trajectory, not cost today: speed-first delivery creates unpredictable future spend because debt compounds.
• Translate technical risk into business risk: revenue leakage, operational fragility, compliance exposure, reduced agility.
• Highlight the market opportunity and cost of delay, not just the cost of build: early revenue or avoided loss often outweighs project budgets.
• And distinguish between reversible and irreversible decisions: speed works for experiments; quality is essential for platforms, integrations and customer-facing systems.

If stakeholders understand reversibility and risk, they understand the trade-off.

Want Help Making the Right Trade-Off?

At Kohde, we help South African enterprises move fast where it matters and invest in quality where it counts, using engineering-led practices that reduce technical debt, protect long-term cost, and unlock real delivery velocity.

If you’re exploring a new initiative, evaluating a legacy rebuild, or want a second opinion on the trade-offs in front of you, chat with Joe and the team.