Trade-off: Best Practice Cost vs ROI

In an ideal world, we all want to follow best practices—clean code, perfect architecture, full test coverage, elegant CI/CD pipelines, and complete monitoring setups. But the reality at work is far from ideal. I’ve personally experienced how many best practices don’t make it into production—not due to laziness or ignorance, but because technology is just one part of a bigger picture: the business.

Technology Is a Tool, Not the Goal

As software developers, we often treat technology as the center of the universe. But in the business context, it’s just a tool to achieve specific outcomes. And every tool has a cost.

Take this simple example: writing proper unit tests early on is good practice. But if we’re racing to deliver an MVP to validate market demand in two weeks, obsessing over 90% coverage may be a poor investment. Real user feedback might be far more valuable than ideal test metrics.

Best Practices Come at a Cost

Every best practice comes with a price—time, resources, and money. For instance:

• Designing modular and scalable architecture takes more time than quick-and-dirty code.
• Writing automated tests consumes upfront time, even if it saves effort later.
• Implementing advanced observability tools may require additional budget and operational expertise.

All of these decisions need to be weighed carefully: is the upfront investment worth the short-term or long-term return?

Pragmatism ≠ Carelessness

One key thing I’ve learned: being pragmatic doesn’t mean being careless. It means knowing when to apply a best practice and when to postpone, adapt, or simplify it.

For example:

• When building an internal prototype for a small team, you might not need microservices.
• But when building a system expected to scale and involve many teams, ignoring architecture early on could become a costly mistake.

The point is: we shouldn’t blindly enforce best practices without considering the context.

ROI as a Compass

At the end of the day, it’s not about technical ego—it’s about ROI (Return on Investment). If something offers high value for reasonable cost, it’s worth doing. If the cost outweighs the short-term value, it’s time to look for leaner alternatives.

ROI can take many forms: faster delivery, better reliability, happier users, or even reduced team burnout.

---

Closing Thoughts

The professional world is a battlefield of trade-offs. This doesn’t mean we abandon quality—it means we learn to balance technical ideals with business realities. Becoming a developer who understands this trade-off is a step toward the next level: not just writing code, but understanding how technical decisions impact the business as a whole.