Any business, from a micro-ISV to Google, has to balance moving quickly against moving  recklessly.

Moving recklessly leads to forgettable and bad experiences.   Functionality may be made available more quickly, but at what cost?  The interaction and interface, as well as the communication around the feature, have to be at least adequately completed, or else the new functionality will flop.

Customers remember bad experiences more readily than they remember good ones.  Bad experiences color perceptions of the company, which has ripple effects.  A customer becomes less likely to choose the company for business.  The company has also now created a greater barrier that they will have to overcome to win back the customer.  Not only does the company have to get their name back on the customer’s radar, they have to convince the customer that they will not have a repeat negative experience.  Easier said than done.

How is your company moving: quickly, or recklessly?