What is the most effective way to balance system development speed and reliability?

Speed is actually a misrepresented benefit of using Agile methods. Agile doesn't make a project faster from start to finish. That isn't the goal. Properly implemented Agile makes a team more responsive to inevitable change. It allows us to "inspect and adapt" to the shifting demands of a project and team to make sure it stays on track every step of the way. We are certainly able to deliver value faster with each individual sprint, but it doesn't ultimately aim to speed up the overall delivery.

One important point that is missed that agile methodology is a famous mechanism for granular planning and enables to break a bigger function / topic on various small usable iterations. when this applied to system development the most vulnerable part in the process is system integration. Therefore If proper integration is taken care at smaller stages that I would say agile will not give speed but will ensure functional accuracy I.e first time right .

It’s all about increasing the probability of reaching at the desired goal in time and within budget by shortening the learning cycles

To efficiently strike a balance i believe it’s important to fail fast and work on incremental development rather than ideal achievement

There are a number of different Agile frameworks, such as Scrum, Kanban, and Lean. Each framework has its own strengths and weaknesses. It is important to choose a framework that is a good fit for your team and your project. Instead of blindly following any specific framework, adopt Agile to suit your needs and deliver software more quickly and reliably.

There are lots of software development frameworks/methodologies out there, however, the key point in answering this question is perspective. When developing an MVP, speed is of essence, as it's important to fail-fast and move on if an idea is suboptimal. However, in BAU mode, with paying customers, one has to ensure the system is reliable. So, reliability is the product of having well a well tested software, built using resilient patterns, and backed by meaningful metrics & observability stack, all of which are quite time intensive to bootstrap initially, but the long term payoff is huge, and when automated, these practices become seamless, allowing you to be confident that the software you are shipping is top quality.

One of the things I found very helpful is to not force my working team to use a proprietary tool such as Gherkin/Specflow, when I know that each of them are capable of coding any powerful language such as C# and the likes. In my experience, MSTest framework with C# and Selenium on Azure DevOps is a good enough package to create Test Automation Suite to help in the speedy delivery of a great quality and reliable system. Too much add-on makes the balancing impossible. I rather develop in a reliable one stop shop and maximize the use of its features, time is of the essence & I certainly don't want to keep debugging our Test Codes, because the proprietary tool will not work. I rather debug my Test Codes because another Test Case is created.

We, the working team, must have that Customer Service attitude because User Feedback is so valuable in the improvement of our own skills, it is imperative that we take time to listen to User Feedbacks, be willing to absorb and digest it and be willing to improve YOU according to feedbacks that you think truly will add value to YOU. We as Software Engineers will only reach success if we are willing to learn all the time with humility. With the fast evolving technology all the more we have to act as if we are always a college student with a dry sponge ready to absorb the newest release in technology world, taking into account how we can use it to make our life easier with efficiency in mind.

Some additional tips: 1. Use a risk-based approach to decision-making: Not all bugs are created equal. Some bugs are more critical than others. Teams can use a r k-based approach to prioritize the fixing of bugs. 2. Empower teams to make decisions: Teams should be empowered to make decisions about how to balance speed and reliability. This will help them to be more agile and responsive to changes in the market. 3. Create a culture of learning and improvement: Teams should constantly be learning and improving their practices. This will help them to find new ways to balance speed and reliability.

Listen to your team. People want to do good work in a low-friction environment, and you can get your team to that place by just talking to them. This is where the servant-leader mentality can really shine. Your job in leadership is to remove roadblocks and friction for your team to get them to a place where they're functioning efficiently (and happily). "Pure Agile" is probably not the best fit, and pure anything else probably isn't either. Your team can guide you on exactly how they'll become that efficient team you want them to be.