A team can have good people, good processes, and clear goals - and still move slowly.
One reason can be simple: the feedback loop is too long.
Imagine someone spends three days working on something, only to discover during review that the approach was wrong.
The problem isn’t necessarily the person.
The team found out too late.
A feedback loop is simply:
Action → Result → Feedback → Adjustment
The shorter the useful feedback loop, the faster the team can learn.
This applies everywhere:
- A small technical discussion before starting a large implementation.
- A quick design review before writing the whole thing.
- A PR reviewed while the context is still fresh.
- A short demo instead of waiting until everything is finished.
- A checkpoint when someone is exploring an unfamiliar problem.
But shorter doesn’t mean more meetings.
The goal is to find the cheapest point at which useful feedback can change the outcome.
There’s also a feedback loop at the team level.
Something goes wrong → understand why → change something → see whether it worked.
If the same problem keeps appearing, the team isn’t really learning from the feedback.
So I think a useful question is:
“How long does it take us to discover that we’re going in the wrong direction?”
Reducing that time can be one of the simplest ways to improve how a team works.
Don’t just create feedback. Create feedback early enough to matter.
