Every team wants to move fast. The mistake is believing that speed is achieved by skipping the boring parts.
The boring parts - the data model, the service boundaries, the error handling, the tests - are what let you keep moving fast in month twelve. Code written quickly is debt you repay with interest, and the interest compounds.
We don't believe in ceremony for its own sake. A two-pizza startup doesn't need a six-layer architecture. But there is a floor: the decisions that are genuinely expensive to reverse should be made deliberately. A database schema survives the product. A public API outlives the team that wrote it.
Our advice to teams staring down a deadline is usually the same: prototype in a throwaway, but design the seams. The seams - where one component ends and another begins - are what you keep. When they're clean, replacing an implementation is a Tuesday, not a project.
Moving fast forever is a discipline, not a sprint. It looks boring from the outside, and that's the point.