Velocity vs. Architecture: Why Small Teams Need Kaizen
Lately, our engineering team has been shipping features at a pretty intense pace. When you're working with a small, agile team, it’s easy to get caught up in the momentum of closing out tickets and pushing code.
It feels great to move fast, but raw velocity is a trap if you aren't careful. If you're just writing code without thinking about the system, a small team can accumulate technical debt at an incredible speed.
I've been thinking a lot about the concept of Kaizen (continuous improvement) and how it applies to software architecture, not just code.
To keep our pace up without breaking things, I've had to force a shift in our workflow:
- We've started writing "Technical Decision Records" (TDRs) before making major architectural changes or adopting new tools. Code explains the what, but TDRs explain the why.
- We're being extremely strict with our TypeScript and NestJS ecosystem to catch issues before they ever reach a PR review.
- We treat infrastructure as a core part of the architecture, not just an afterthought.
Building products here in Japan has really reinforced for me that long-term system quality and short-term product delivery have to go hand-in-hand, especially when you don't have a massive engineering department to clean up mistakes.
I'm currently looking to expand my network here in the local tech scene. If you're a recruiter, founder, or engineering leader in Japan dealing with scaling challenges or building modern backends with small teams, feel free to reach out. Let's grab a virtual coffee and talk architecture.