--- title: Why Great Products Slow Down to Speed Up: A PM’s Guide... description: A PM-focused guide arguing that investing in operational excellence (OpEx) — CI/CD pipelines, test automation, monitoring, and system hardening — is what... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/why-great-products-slow-down-to-speed-up-a-pm-s-guide-to-investing-in-opex-sajc3tdar twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Why Great Products Slow Down to Speed Up: A PM’s Guide to Investing in OpEx | daily.dev og:description: A PM-focused guide arguing that investing in operational excellence (OpEx) — CI/CD pipelines, test automation, monitoring, and system hardening — is what... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/why-great-products-slow-down-to-speed-up-a-pm-s-guide-to-investing-in-opex-sajc3tdar og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/SAJC3TDAr.png og:image:alt: Why Great Products Slow Down to Speed Up: A PM’s Guide to Investing in OpEx 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. # Why Great Products Slow Down to Speed Up: A PM’s Guide to Investing in OpEx **[Medium](https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js)** · 6 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A PM-focused guide arguing that investing in operational excellence (OpEx) — CI/CD pipelines, test automation, monitoring, and system hardening — is what separates products that scale from those that collapse under load. Drawing on Twitter's Fail Whale era and personal Amazon experience, the author makes the case for dedicating 30–35% of team capacity to OpEx, measuring its ROI through error budgets and cost of downtime, and championing it on the roadmap alongside feature work. Key advice: use code freezes for OpEx pushes, translate technical investments into business terms for stakeholders, and treat reliability improvements as launches worth celebrating. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Blog: Developer Experience Is a Capacity Strategy, Not a Perk](https://daily.dev/posts/blog-developer-experience-is-a-capacity-strategy-not-a-perk-s5kznrxdj) · Wawandco · 2 upvotes · 0 comments - [FinOps Isn’t Slowing You Down — It’s Fixing Your Pipeline](https://daily.dev/posts/finops-isn-t-slowing-you-down-it-s-fixing-your-pipeline-gcosvxlnk) · DevOps.com · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [The Tradeoff That Slows Production Teams Down: Flexibility vs Actually Shipping](https://daily.dev/posts/the-tradeoff-that-slows-production-teams-down-flexibility-vs-actually-shipping-phm39jnch) · freeCodeCamp · 15 upvotes · 2 comments --- Tags: [#cicd](https://daily.dev/tags/cicd), [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#product-management](https://daily.dev/tags/product-management), [#technical-debt](https://daily.dev/tags/technical-debt) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/why-great-products-slow-down-to-speed-up-a-pm-s-guide-to-investing-in-opex-sajc3tdar) ```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":"Why Great Products Slow Down to Speed Up: A PM’s Guide to Investing in OpEx","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-great-products-slow-down-to-speed-up-a-pm-s-guide-to-investing-in-opex-sajc3tdar","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-great-products-slow-down-to-speed-up-a-pm-s-guide-to-investing-in-opex-sajc3tdar"},"datePublished":"2026-07-20T19:30:03.582Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:49:27.029Z","description":"A PM-focused guide arguing that investing in operational excellence (OpEx) — CI/CD pipelines, test automation, monitoring, and system hardening — is what...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d452f2855202890a2d754ffa3faefd02?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/d452f2855202890a2d754ffa3faefd02?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Medium","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":"Medium","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/medium","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/why-great-products-slow-down-to-speed-up-a-pm-s-guide-to-investing-in-opex-sajc3tdar","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"cicd,observability,product-management,technical-debt","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Medium","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/medium_js"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Why Great Products Slow Down to Speed Up: A PM’s Guide to Investing in OpEx"}]} ```