The fastest team I ever worked on didn't look fast from the outside.
There were no late nights. No dramatic pushes. No heroic Slack messages at 2 a.m. about "crushing it" or "shipping under pressure."
In fact, it was almost boring.
People arrived in the morning, worked on things that made sense, and left at reasonable times. Features appeared steadily, without ceremony. Bugs were fixed without post-mortems that read like court transcripts.
Nobody talked about velocity.
What we did talk about, constantly, was whether something was worth doing.
If someone had an idea, they'd usually just try it. Not in a reckless way — in a curious way. The cost of being wrong was low, so being wrong wasn't embarrassing. If something didn't work, it quietly disappeared.
There were very few meetings. The ones that existed ended early. Decisions were made by the people closest to the problem, which meant they were usually good enough.
At the time, it didn't feel exceptional. It felt normal.
Only later did I realise how unusual it was.
Every slow team I've worked on since has been obsessed with speed. Roadmaps, sprints, burn-down charts, urgency. They felt fast, which is often how you know they aren't.
The difference wasn't tools. It wasn't talent. It wasn't even experience.
It was trust.
People trusted each other to make decisions. Trusted that mistakes weren't fatal. Trusted that fixing things was more important than explaining why they broke.
When tools got better — when building and changing things became easier — that trust turned into momentum. Not the loud kind. The quiet kind that compounds.
If you weren't paying attention, you'd miss it.