[drewcoo]

> The problem is the velocity hit you take by doing this is its own risk that's not tracked in the same way predictability and bus factor are.

I think there's a better way to think about risk here.

There's lower risk with the predictable team. Those are so common, especially in established business, that we can even treat this as the default state.

If you so wish, you can take on more risk and seriously slim down and get work done faster. And it will almost certainly be faster on a large enough time scale, but because it's less predictable, you're now playing schedule chicken.

The kind of risk that you bring up, risk of being less risky and going slower . . . is really just opportunity cost. And it's ok to take that on as a tradeoff for something else, too, if you do it with eyes wide open.

Risk is not a thing to be avoided. It is a thing to harness to gain an edge on competition. After all, without risk there is no profit.