--- title: Build Smart Before You Build Fast | daily.dev description: A narrative traces how merge throughput collapses as an engineering team scales from a solo founder to a 30-person mobile team, driven by growing CI times,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/build-smart-before-you-build-fast-8cx3qrtb5 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Build Smart Before You Build Fast | daily.dev og:description: A narrative traces how merge throughput collapses as an engineering team scales from a solo founder to a 30-person mobile team, driven by growing CI times,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/build-smart-before-you-build-fast-8cx3qrtb5 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/8cx3QRTB5.png og:image:alt: Build Smart Before You Build Fast og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Build Smart Before You Build Fast **[ Tuist ](https://daily.dev/sources/tuist-blog)** · 13 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A narrative traces how merge throughput collapses as an engineering team scales from a solo founder to a 30-person mobile team, driven by growing CI times, merge conflicts, and review bottlenecks. It contrasts brute-force fixes (faster CI hardware, more hires, a React Native rewrite) that provide marginal gains at high cost against workflow optimizations like binary caching and selective testing, which cut CI time from 20 to 4 minutes and roughly double merge throughput at a fraction of the cost. The piece promotes Tuist's caching and selective testing features as the solution, with illustrative cost/ROI figures. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Why does merge throughput go down as an engineering team grows even with AI coding assistants? Merge throughput drops because coordination overhead grows faster than output as teams scale: PRs sit in review queues, merge conflicts multiply as more people touch overlapping code, CI times lengthen as test suites grow, and flaky tests add retries. A 30-person mobile team can end up producing only a fraction of the output its headcount should generate, even though every engineer has AI tools boosting individual coding speed. _Track workflow bottlenecks like these alongside other engineering scaling stories on daily.dev._ ### How much can binary caching and selective testing reduce CI time for a mobile team? CI time can drop from 20 minutes to 4 minutes for a 30-person mobile team by implementing binary caching (reusing cached builds for unchanged modules) and selective testing (running only tests affected by a given change) instead of rebuilding and retesting everything on every commit. This cuts daily developer wait time from 60 to 12 minutes, saving roughly 4 FTE worth of time per year for about €20K in annual cost. _Compare build optimization approaches like this before committing engineering budget on daily.dev._ ### Is upgrading to faster CI runners a good ROI compared to optimizing the build workflow itself? Faster CI runners generally give a weak return compared to workflow optimization: in one illustrative case, spending €300K annually on faster runners cut CI time from 20 to 12 minutes and recovered about €280K in developer time, barely breaking even. Workflow changes like binary caching and selective testing, costing around €20K per year, recovered roughly €560K by cutting CI time to 4 minutes. _Weigh hardware spend against workflow fixes for CI slowdowns using comparisons surfaced on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Toss: Building less to ship faster](https://daily.dev/posts/toss-building-less-to-ship-faster-1arhtus0n) · Tuist · 4 upvotes · 0 comments - [Verify faster](https://daily.dev/posts/verify-faster-zmkbwrxol) · RUBYLAND · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [We halved our continuous integration pipeline](https://daily.dev/posts/we-halved-our-continuous-integration-pipeline-w7assusoy) · LeadDev · 0 upvotes · 1 comments - [Build Wide, Ship Narrow](https://daily.dev/posts/build-wide-ship-narrow-ubltyfimm) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Automated Testing Strategies for Trunk-Based Development: How to Build a 10-Minute Pipeline](https://daily.dev/posts/automated-testing-strategies-for-trunk-based-development-how-to-build-a-10-minute-pipeline-k3qqnr8ak) · CodeCraft Diary · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#mobile](https://daily.dev/tags/mobile), [#cicd](https://daily.dev/tags/cicd), [#build-systems](https://daily.dev/tags/build-systems) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/build-smart-before-you-build-fast-8cx3qrtb5) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Build Smart Before You Build Fast","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/build-smart-before-you-build-fast-8cx3qrtb5","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/build-smart-before-you-build-fast-8cx3qrtb5"},"datePublished":"2026-08-23T12:22:15.253Z","dateModified":"2026-08-23T12:47:38.565Z","description":"A narrative traces how merge throughput collapses as an engineering team scales from a solo founder to a 30-person mobile team, driven by growing CI times,...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/1fe0c0321570086210c3a461bf171289?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/1fe0c0321570086210c3a461bf171289?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"\n Tuist\n ","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"\n Tuist\n ","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--3AYDH23h--/f_auto,q_auto/v1787487506/logos/tuist-blog?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/tuist-blog"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/build-smart-before-you-build-fast-8cx3qrtb5","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"mobile,cicd,build-systems","timeRequired":"PT13M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"\n Tuist\n ","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/tuist-blog"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Build Smart Before You Build Fast"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/build-smart-before-you-build-fast-8cx3qrtb5#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Why does merge throughput go down as an engineering team grows even with AI coding assistants?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"Merge throughput drops because coordination overhead grows faster than output as teams scale: PRs sit in review queues, merge conflicts multiply as more people touch overlapping code, CI times lengthen as test suites grow, and flaky tests add retries. 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